When I don't have much to say...

... I don't say much.

 

That is one of the things that leaves me out of the entire 'social networking' and constant blog posting phenomena: most of what I have to say needs to be thought over as these are my public thoughts.  And when my private life is keeping me busy, and I don't have time for much in the way of posting, then there is a lack of posts.

What sort of things do you NOT get?

Computers.

The updating of my computers!  Ahhhh... how does one make Bluetooth work?  Can you find the right drivers that match the operating system *and* make sure the OS doesn't do its own fandango with them?  And if, like I have done, you *upgrade* by getting rid of Vista and going to XP Pro x64, can you make sure that you have all the drivers to let the machines run with full function?

Out of that search I have realized that there is a 'spam' drivers database setup where multiple different sites all host the exact, same, useless database of drivers that link to all sorts of fun and irrelevant sign-up/sign-in schemes.  The few that *do* have drivers are worth knowing, but that flock of sites that are mere clones?  What sort of insanity is that?

Go to the manufacturers website!  And find they *don't* put the drivers out for their products!  Yes!

Lovely...

Then you get things working, after hunting down through message boards and tracks linking to dead pages and roaming cache sites to the actual downloading, installing and checking out of said drivers and software.  Fun was not had.

The decisions are myriad, the research even worse than tracking down the Red Mafia and, to top it all off, theoretically *good* vendors of name-brand hardware and software turn out to have so well refined their websites that you now need a guide, trusted servant, a few Askari warriors and a trail of supply packers to get through the sites.  Yes, that is you: Microsoft, Dell, Apple, LG Electronics, Hitachi Data Systems, Samsung, and Sony.  And the flash-based navigation is so snazzy its useless: how about a directory?  Not a 'we have decided to agglomerate odd bits of stuff together and give it a title' category, but a *real* category system?  The MS Knowledge Base needs this as of 6 years ago: segregate by OS, SP, and date, then allow menuing up and down that data tree.  Want to find all the Hot Fixes since a Service Pack, and have them ordered by timing?

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!  Even MS DEVELOPERS want that, and have for YEARS!!  I consider it bad news that the best piece of code to do that is 3 years old and not too well made.  In theory you could download them one-by-one, but, really, this should be an automated procedure.

Back to drivers... if you put out a driver for an OS a few years back and have since stopped producing the equipment and don't want to support the driver, could you, as a manufacturer/reseller/distributor, just *say so* and make the old one available?  Please?  That covers all save Dell, which has the impenetrable fortress of drivers, with various search capabilities that don't really get what you want.  If I have a device, with an OS you support, would it be that hard to get a list of every single driver for that device?   It is, probably, do-able, just not obvious, and I have spent time looking for the obvious.

Then there is brand *NEW* hardware!  Get a low cost Bluetooth dongle and find the software is so old its not even on the 'somewhat recent list' of the maker.  If the maker is still around... yes I finally *did* get the Dell add-ons to work for their respective notebooks.  The *other* ones I got for easy file transfers?  Heh.

Cats.

Yes that is a LOLCat, don't ask me where I got it from: no idea, I tend to just download fun images and not keep track of them.  You can probably get it at its home site, but I'm way too tired to check it out.

One of our cats has pulled up with a heart condition, which means applying liquid medications a couple of times a day.  Plus water.  Luckily it is all in liquid (especially the water) and feeding by oral syringe is the way to go.  Three times daily.

Luckily the other cat has not decided that getting such medicines is a sign of favoritism!  For small blessings we are always thankful.

Politics.

Nope, can't remember where I got that one, either.

Really, this is one of those election seasons where my mind starts to wander and make things like this:

Suitable for your next May Day parade!  You know the old 'Marx, Lenin, Stalin' sort of deal?  Done in my copious brain-dead time, when nothing else really appeals...

It has been interesting to see a few people finally starting to look at the candidates and who they surround themselves with... well... Barack Obama finally getting ANY scrutiny, which, if he had gotten this, say 8 months ago, would have sunk the SS Obama like the Titanic.  Unfortunately the MSM has had so many different 'cards' played against it that the deck is starting to run thin.  We have had the *Black* card, *Racist* card, *Gender* card, *Religion* card (in at least four different suits!), *Populist* card, *Warmonger* card, *Pacifist* card, *Hope and Change* card followed by the *Change and Hope* card, *Terrorist* card and who knows what else all played out.  Often within minutes of each other.  The game is, unfortunately, Big Government Runaway and both Parties are winning.  After that deck runs out, it will be the deck of Shameless Pandering to start the next round of Big Government Runaway, so that we will know exactly how much each candidate will extract from the American people to waste on government and giving government more power and less capability.

Worked for the USSR, now, didn't it?  This, 'put government in charge of everything to decide your life for you and take all your rights away and make you poor' deal.  Worked just fine.  Notice the lack of a USSR today...

You can have your Democratic Socialist John McCain, your Left Socialist Hillary Clinton or your outright Communist With Molotov Cocktail Friends Barack Obama.  Any way you vote you will get Socialism. And, so, if I have to vote for mythological views of the world, I might as well...

Yup!  And makes a heck of a lot more sense than the views of any of the three running for office: He gets everything, or you are a snack.  Good, open, honest Evil!  None of this 'trying to figure out healthcare' junk that politics is ill-set up to do... really, what is supposed to make politicians health care geniuses?  These three can't even be bothered to read the Constitution and understand their *current jobs* - why should any of them get promoted past their admirable level of incompetence?  Really, by the Peter Principle these three are perfectly situated... and little do they understand that the power they seek is not what it appears to be.

Reading about the antics going on by each of the candidates, the mud slinging, fur flying, card trumping idiocy of the Democratic Party is only being matched by the slow walk-out from the Republican Party as the concept of a 'Big Tent' to address the needs of ALL inside of it is finally dawning to be a false promise.  If Reagan couldn't do it, no one could.  The old Country Club Chummy Government Republicans look to have taken over the party and are about a decade or two behind the Democrats in that.  Just as the Democrats hemorrhaged the Jacksonians starting in 1968, the Republicans look to be losing the Traditionalists, who gained enough headway to cross over into Economic and Military venues, pointing out the wisdom of not getting into military arrangement you don't intend to back fully.

That is the problem I've been pointing out about democracy: you need to have a majority at least voting for it to be anything close to representative.  It hasn't been, on the Legislative side, since the 1960's.  Now we will get that for the Executive AND Legislative branches, by the two parties so marginalizing the old-line Nation State supporters that neither party actually understands what a Nation State actually *is* nor how it is set up to function and why it is done this way.  That started back in the 1920's, as near as I can figure out, accelerated in the 1930's, turned on the turbo-boost in the 1960's and added nitro injection during the 1990's.  Once that system falls apart, mankind is left with very, very little to support it as Nation States were made to be flexible, adaptable and to give respect and accord to different peoples.  All that multi-culti BS spewn by the Left and mimicked by the Big Government Right points out that Big Government is the problem in human affairs, not the solution.

Which means...

The old D&D done with a twist, what is not to love? 

When Big Government goes super-size and under able, it is time to look to yourself.  I, famously, do not trust myself with such things.. but I do trust myself far, far more than I trust government and the two parties.  I know my limitations and my faults - government, most assuredly, does not.  At the founding good and hard reasons were put forth as to *why* government should be restrained, limited and kept on a short leash with sign posts of what is seen in society and government when those things are put aside. 

And as the founding generation that talked about this looked at all the outcomes when government *did* start accumulating more to itself, brushing off those concerns when we do the exact, same thing is not only unwise but foolhardy.  But no one goes past the Federalist Papers anymore, to look at the broader scope and context of the discussions going on.  When Federalists are being questioned on their grounds because they are *not* adhering to federalism, as a few people DID, why did they get lumped into the 'Anti-Federalist' area, when what they wanted was a more complete form of federalism?  And the 'Anti-Federalists' who *did* criticize what was being made pointed out that such accumulations of power have not worked out in the long haul and pointed to other Republics and their governing systems and then put those into context of what was being drafted.

Looking at those times and writings, I am shocked that the modern, two-party, binary logic is not seen for the problem that it *is*.  This has gotten down to the reductio ad absurdum of who can give the most to the most people while impoverishing all.  The economy is not a measure of freedom or liberty, but of economic activity.  So if government can find ways to *restrict* individuals while not putting that in peril, then it can be pointed to and say 'everything is fine' or 'that candidate is putting the ECONOMY at risk... here are the things I will take from you to fix it'.  And, huzzah!, the economic cycle shifts and gets better while the people get poorer and more restricted.  Soon the government will have absolute control over *both*, and call government mandates on what you do, how you act, how you think and how you live: liberty.

My recommendation?

Multi-classing!

Even if, somehow, America can avoid the worse, a bit of self-reliance can never hurt.

That and much else is occupying my limited time of consciousness and even more limited energy.

Survival first... trimmings later.