I haven’t thought about ReactOS for quite some time. When I first read about it, I got a demo (CD or something?) and ran it just to see what it was about. It didn’t look exciting–basically looked like ugly old Windows classic–but that’s because it’s not supposed to be about looks, it’s supposed to be about compatibility with applications and drivers (!) written for Windows NT. I read an article this morning about the new 0.3.4 release, and I had a thought…

I use Windows only for PS and occasional video editing. I’ve actually learned enough Gimp that I use PS only for composites or photos that really need a lot of help. I do so little video editing that I can’t even remember the name of the software that I use–it’s Adobe’s cheapo home version of Premiere (maybe Premiere Elements?) ReactOS 0.3 is under heavy development and currently only in alpha, but I know it would run older versions of Photoshop, and I know it will run Office 2K3, which has activation crap like PS, so what if I waited until 0.3 was at least in beta and used that as a platform for PS and PE? I know that PSCS3 doesn’t work on Wine because even if you can get it to install and activate, it’s prone to random crashes. Anything up to 7.0 works, but nothing after. I also know that you can’t install CS3 on Windows 98. I know because I tried once in an effort to free up as many resources for PS as I could. I don’t use the OS itself except to run PS, so it didn’t matter to me whether it was 98SE or XP, but PS refused to install on less than (I think) 2000. If, however, I could get it to install on ReactOS, that would be awesome. I have no idea where the driver disc is for my Wacom tablet, but it’s not a brand-new model, so maybe there’s a 2K driver for it, or maybe the XP driver would work. Otherwise, none of my hardware should be a problem (or I wouldn’t think so). XP is only 2K with makeup on anyway.

I’ve got Ubuntu working the way I want it and XP’s been installed for years (largely unused…hehe), so I don’t want to fuck up my desktop. My laptop is also set up the way I like it (now), and network shares work with Samba, so I don’t want to fuck that up, either. P’s computer, however, is starting to throw errors, and he hasn’t rebuilt in years. He claims he’s going to do that, and that he wants me to set up a dual boot with a suitable Linux distro (I’ll believe that when I see it), but if he’s going to wipe his drive anyway, I don’t imagine he’d care if I installed ReactOS on it and tested PS and PE to make sure they’ll install and run. If it worked, then I’d know it’s worth wiping XP off my drive and having to dick around with Grub’s menu since Windows won’t exist anymore and I don’t want to reinstall Ubuntu so Grub will pick up ReactOS automatically. Hmmm…..

I happened across this picture in a GIS for something else (a Malawi cichlid). I looked at it and thought, “WTF?” so I went to the original page, where I discovered a creationist’s blog. The author was using this image as evidence that evolution is false, since these fish from Malawi and Tanganyika are so little different as to be essentially the same. It was this person’s belief that they should be at least in the same genus, if not the same species, divided only by “Tanganyikan subspecies” and “Malawi subspecies”, and because they are not, science is wrong. God created them, and he wanted them to look mostly the same, with a little difference due to the fact that they live in different Rift Lakes. Looking at the drawings, I can see how someone might think, “Hmmm…they do look alike!”

Pretty convincing, even for someone who stands firmly behind Darwin as I do. Those are drawings, though…artistic depictions. What happens if we look at images of the living fish themselves? Since cichlid colours vary by individual, we’ll be as unbiased as we can under the circumstances. We’ll choose our images from a standard (i.e. not advanced) GIS by species name, taking the image that best represents the colour/pattern of the majority of images, providing it is at least 300 pixels wide and of reasonably good quality.

The first pair in the drawing is Tanganyika’s Julidochromis ornatus, and Malawi’s Melanochromis auratus. Both gold with black stripes running the length of the body, and near-identical in the drawing.

Julidochromis ornatus:

Melanochromis auratus (holding female, but we’ll ignore the bulge of the buccal sac):

Hmmmm….okay, they’re pretty close with both long and slender, though the juli’s jaw is very much narrower and more pointed. Also significant that the male auratus looks nothing like the juvie and female; he is black with white stripes/white dorsal. Still, I’m a helluva nice guy, so I’ll throw you a bone and call this pair “pretty close”.

The next pair are Tropheus brichardi (Tang) and Pseudotropheus microstoma (mbuna). I really had to look for pictures of the microstoma, since even the venerated Cichlid-forum doesn’t list the species, which is anything but common. Our Bible-thumping friends must really have dug deep for this pair! 😉

Tropheus brichardi:

The “elusive” Pseudotropheus microstoma. Actually, except for the yellow on the caudal and rear of the dorsal, it looks very much like another mbuna that I keep myself; Ps. saulosi.

Uh-oh…naughty Bible-thumpers, you’re fibbing to us! A person would have to be fucking blind to call these fish similar enough to be evidence of creation, and if anything, they’re evidence for evolution. Or did your Invisible Sky Wizard break his glasses the day he created them?

Now for a couple of skinny guys…Bathybates ferox is our Tang, and from Malawi, a hap called Rhamphochromis longiceps.

Bathybates ferox:

Rhamphochromis longiceps:

Oh, come on God-folks…two slender fish with nondescript, silvery bodies? One has some barring and the other has none. Uh…yeah, exactly alike. No, you’re not getting this; those fish look as much like a herring as they do one another.

Here we have a couple of lumpy-heads; fronts are Tangs, and the other guy is commonly called “Malawi Blue Dolphin” (though I don’t think it looks much like a dolphin, and it’s certainly not a mammal).

Cyphotilapia frontosa:

Cyrtocara moorii:

Wow–they’re practically identical! Both are large, fronts sometimes have blue on the lower fins, and both have nuchal humps. Yessir, practically the same fish–God obviously did that!!!11one Idiots…have you never seen the CA cichlids with the nuchal humps? No, not yours. Unless God used FedEx and they fucked up his order so two ended up in Africa and the rest in Central America, I’m giving this one to Darwin.

Our final pair are Lobochilotes labiatus from Tanganyika, and from Malawi, Placidochromis milomo. Our God-drawing shows them looking remarkably similar except for differences in the width of their bars. Now, let’s see the real thing…

Lobochilotes labiatus:

Placidochromis milomo:

No, you’re not getting this one, either. The resemblance begins and ends at “they both have rubbery lips”. If your God created these, then he fucked up.

So, to recap, the first pair is a pretty good match if you ignore the fact that only juvie and female auratus look anything like a juli. Second pair, not even fucking close. Third pair, these fish look so generic that they’d match with hundreds of others. Fourth pair, there is some slight resemblance, but no more than there would be if I compared those fish to some of the big Central Americans that develop nuchal humps and fudged the colour in my drawing. Yes, like you did. Last pair…fageddabouddit. Your comparison drawings are nothing more than God-propaganda, and that is because you have no fact to offer. Suck it, God-lovers.

I am constructed of 100% pure, unadulterated geek-awesome! Okay, so it was pretty easy, but I am nonetheless using dual LCD monitors under X, and I did it without fucking anything up, which is worth something. At least I don’t think anything is fucked up; I’ve restarted X only once since I wrote the changes to xorg.conf, but it’s all working properly now, so it should be okay. Well, I did lock it up once because I was messing around behind the box and gave the Envision cable a pretty decent whack, but I’d expect that since it’s on a digital adapter that sticks out quite a way and I didn’t lock it onto the card because I wasn’t sure it was going to work at all. Anyway, if it’s not okay in the end, then I’ll just disconnect the second monitor and restore xorg.conf from the backup I made before I started screwing around with it (if I forget, it’s called xorg.conf_bkp19jan). Now, I just need some bigass high-res wallpapers that don’t have the focal point right in the middle, since my screen resolution is 2720×1024, spanned over the two monitors. There’s a way to have separate wallpapers for each screen, but I’d rather have continuity from one to another, and besides, I’m a big fan of, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. A lot of people have had a very difficult time getting dual monitors (perhaps particularly one widescreen and one not) configured under X, sometimes even with Nvidia cards/chips, and I didn’t (so far), so I’ll take what I can get! 🙂

Nerd Central, which is poorly lit because everyone knows Linux nerds eschew both the outdoors and the daylight with which it is associated. Not that anyone sane would go outside when it’s 12-fucking-F. Also because the window is in a spot where I was getting reflections on the widescreen, so I had to close the blinds and didn’t want to use the flash because it would bounce). 😉

Now the next time I bring the laptop over and put it on the little table next to my desk, it won’t be just Nerd Central, it’ll be dual-Linux, triple-screen Nerd Command Central!

Grisly:

(Not real–liberated from some Hollywood effects site.)

Grizzly:

LEARN THE DIFFERENCE! You look like an illiterate fool if you don’t know the difference between “horrifying” and “a large ursine mammal that inhabits western North America”. Well hell…maybe you are an illiterate fool. Either way, you might want to bookmark Merriam-Webster Online.

To get the fortune in a terminal like Mint, except in red….obviously, install fortune, then add this to the end of .bashrc

echo -ne ‘\033[01;31m’; fortune; echo -ne ‘\033[00m’

So frantically cheerful that I just couldn’t help but liberate it. 🙂

For a guy who looks like a dangerous escaped criminal, J. is an awfully nice man and a talker on par with me (world class). I met his brother, too, and that was also interesting because judging from the front view, I fully expected to see “Hell’s Angels” emblazoned across the back of his jacket. The hardened criminal and the biker. Hehe. Also seemed a nice man, but I did have a helluva time figuring out what he was saying. There are midwest accents and midwest accents, and M. is definitely the latter.

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. Are you seriously that stupid? Is English your second language or something, and that is why your reading comprehension is so poor? Your fish have ich. I give you a clearly visible link to an ich treatment article that tells you everything you want to know about ich and its treatment, and some stuff you might not want to know, and yet, your question is, “…should I try adding some salt?” NO, dumbass, you should NOT try adding some salt. You shouldn’t “try” anything; you should just do as you’re goddamned well TOLD, which, if you’d READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE LIKE I TOLD YOU, you would know includes:

Do not add salt. Salt at levels commonly used in freshwater aquariums will not help to cure your fish of Ich. Salt is for saltwater or brackish water tanks. Treating Ich in saltwater, brackish and pond environments is outside the scope of this article.

Now…stop asking stupid questions and start following instructions, and maybe–just maybe–we can get these ordinarily very hardy fish healthy again before you kill even more than you have already. Dumbass.

Me: I’m not a real person, you know. I’m actually a bot, and not only do I scan the entire contents of your hard drive, I also log into any accounts you may have online and scan the contents, plus I control remote wireless cameras to monitor you. Did I somehow forget to mention all of that before?

B: You didn’t have to mention that!! I know that you’re a data freak so I expected that and I don’t care!! I have nothing to hide from you!!

I think maaaaybe someone’s spent a little too much time watching television “hackers” and not enough time understanding how computers really work. Amusing, though. He’s also got a bad case of exclamation point-itis; perhaps that should be our next English lesson….

P. read in the paper that Matt got arrested, charged with whatever may be the official equivalent of intent to manufacture methamphetamine. He and another guy whose name we didn’t recognise were noticed “behaving suspiciously” when purchasing pseudoephedrine from a drugstore. The pharmacist called the cops, who then followed them to (I believe) two more pharmacies, where they also purchased pseudoephedrine. Nobody has a cold or allergies that bad, so it was fairly obvious what they intended to do, and they got stopped. They had the pseudoephedrine, plus a small amount of weed (possession small amount, not intent to distribute amount). They got taken to jail, and according to the next thing P read in the paper, they were being held on $50 000.00 bond. I don’t know where Matt’s real father is, but I do know that his mother and stepfather most likely do not have a spare $5000 floating around to give a bail bondsman (presuming it’s still 10% you have to have), and Matt himself certainly doesn’t have it. I suppose D. and his wife could take out a loan on their house, but whether they’d do that just to get Matt’s skinny arse out of jail, I don’t know.

On one hand, Matt deserved to be arrested and charged because he’s 28 years old, so he’s an adult, and although I don’t know him that well, I do know him well enough to see that he’s in full control of his faculties, and is of at least average intelligence. It’s not like he didn’t know that he’d have to get pseudoephedrine from the pharmacist because it’s been taken off shelves, and it’s not like he didn’t know that authorities are well aware of what it’s often used for (that’s why it’s not on the shelves anymore), and that pharmacists are instructed to report anything suspicious right away. If they don’t, they might just lose their jobs. Seems like every city and even some small towns in the midwest claims itself “the meth capital of the country”, but that’s because meth is a problem, and particularly in areas where good jobs are scarce (check, and even the bad jobs are disappearing), a large part of the workforce is unskilled (check), and the real estate market is so poor that even if they did want to move, they couldn’t because the house wouldn’t sell in anything like a hurry, if at all (check). This is an agricultural area–our Wal-Mart is actually bordered by a field of milo and another of soybeans–and agriculture provides ready access to tanks of anhydrous ammonia. Although I don’t know how to make meth myself and I’m not interested in learning, I do know that’s one ingredient used in the process. Anyway, no matter where the meth capital may be, it’s a problem here, and Matt was aware of that. He lives in the same small town as I do, so do his parents, and that was true when the meth lab on the top floor of a house two blocks from here blew up a couple of years ago. He knew it was illegal, he knew that it’s a big deal for local authorities to appear Tough On Crime® in this War on Drugsâ„¢ because we always Think of the Children©. He accepted the risk, gambled and lost. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly to jail.

OTOH, I know Matt. We’re not close friends, but I’ve hung out with him at the course at least weekly for….oh, almost two years. He has a big, fat, nasty bitch of a wife, and an adorable little girl who’s not quite two and always smiling. She adores her father, and grandpa, and uncle Josh, and sometimes, Matt even brought her, towing her in her little red Flyer wagon (with canopy) when he came to play. I’m not a kid person, but she’s really cute, and a good kid; easy to amuse, and not too much trouble. Matt’s great with her, even when she’s tired and fussy and he’s obviously frustrated. Anyway, my point is that Matt isn’t some sleazy drug dealer, selling his wares to buy new spinners for his brand new Suburban, and spending the rest on whores. He’s an ordinary guy; he drives an ordinary car that’s a few years old, he lives in (I believe) a rented house over on the other side of town, and he works nights as a meat department manager at Wal-Mart. I don’t know whether his wife works, but if she doesn’t, then he supports her and the baby. If she does, then somebody’s getting paid to look after the little one because even if they worked opposite shifts, Matt would be sleeping during the day, and you can’t babysit a two-year-old if you’re asleep!

I’m going to hazard an educated guess that if he intended to manufacture and distribute meth, he was going to do it to supplement an income that just wasn’t enough. Yeah, yeah–get a better job. Where? What we laughingly term an “industrial park” has two businesses remaining in it; if you want to work at one of them, you’ll have to wait for someone to die because nobody will give up a secure job that pays reasonably well. The other is the last remaining sweatshop in the country, and that I know because P. worked there for a while when we first arrived, just until he could find a real job, and it nearly killed him. The rest have all shut down. What’s left? “Would you like sauce with your nuggets, sir?” That’s about it, except for Wal-Mart, and that’s where he does work. We know how well Wal-Mart treats its employees! His father is a drywaller and so are his twin half-brothers (so they don’t necessarily have steady work themselves), his brother works at the sweatshop. There’s really nothing else here. A few small companies–insurance and the like–but those are businesses that offer jobs to maybe half a dozen people. So move, right? Great…and moving expenses come from where, exactly? If you don’t have enough money to pay rent where it’s cheap because the area is economically depressed, then you surely don’t have enough money to move somewhere else, and especially when you’re moving away from your parents, who have been helping provide child care. It’s one big fucked-up circle that leads nowhere.

I don’t excuse Matt, and I don’t think his arrest was illegal, but I surely do understand his motivation. I don’t want meth labs blowing up in my neighbourhood any more than anyone else does, but if we’d just stop this stupid War on Drugsâ„¢ and legalise it, then maybe we could get some safe, legal manufacturing plants here and bring some goddamned jobs. I don’t care if someone wants to do drugs–if, as an adult, you want to inject poison into your veins and end up with meth mouth and a face covered with open sores, more power to you. As long as you’re not driving under the influence of drugs (which is already illegal, as it is for alcohol), it’s your body, and your business. Snort fucking Drano if that makes you happy, but the War on Drugsâ„¢ is nothing more than a way to piss away our tax dollars and create a black market of potentially toxic substances, and ends up costing us a fortune to incarcerate people who probably would not have broken the law if they saw another viable option.

I’m Bob Heskett, and that’s the way I see it! 🙂

Not my words, but true nonetheless. More than one would expect from Flickr comments on a photo called “Atheist Headstone”.

The believer tells himself that he is going somewhere special because he is not strong enough to face the truth that he is just decomposing into the same earth as millions of humans before him.

The atheist lives his life knowing that each day is the most important of his life, and that every word and action is critically important because this is the only chance he gets to live well and leave the world better than when he came into it.

The believer lives each day pretending that he is forgiven all his selfish and perverted acts, and deceives himself that he will be going to disneyland when he dies so nothing in this life is important.