January 12, 2008
by infmom
0 comments
I also upgraded this journal to the latest edition of WordPress, updated all my plugins and removed some of the ones I’m not using. That, at least, went well. But if you spot any glitches, please let me know. I’m definitely getting better at this with practice. 🙂
Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.January 12, 2008
by infmom
0 comments
I finally got all the computer mayhem straightened out, but it sure did cause me a giant case of the wim-wams there for a while.
And I learned a couple new things, like how to get rid of unwanted passwords, and how to force a reluctant computer to boot from the proper hard drive. I also learned that a Western Digital hard drive won’t work in an external enclosure but a Seagate drive will. And I got Acronis TrueImage working, with a little help from their tech support, and it does indeed clone drives perfectly.
Oh, and I learned that the lawnmower noise my computer was making was not the hard drive after all but one of the fans, probably in the power supply. Can we all say DUH!!! together, now?
So that “resolution” gets things back on more or less an even keel at least for the moment.
The other resolution is that I’m not messing with that stuff EVER again. My son will get a new computer eventually and transferring his stuff from one to the other is going to be entirely in his hands.
Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.January 9, 2008
by infmom
0 comments
It all seemed so easy.
I was going to clone the contents of my son’s hard drive to a new, larger hard drive, and then set him up with a 
newer computer. I have software that will deal with that. Or so I thought.
I got Maxtor MaxBlast with my newest hard drive, and it offered to let me upgrade to Acronis TrueImage at an attractive price. So I took them up on that. Unfortunately, I can’t install TrueImage because it’s an upgrade copy and it keeps asking me for the serial number of the previous version, and MaxBlast has no serial number. I emailed Acronis about this two days ago and have only got their form “we got your email” reply.
I tried using the MaxBlast software on the computer I was trying to refurbish, but it says it won’t run without a Maxtor or Seagate drive present. Um… there were three drives in the computer at the time–a WD, a Maxtor, and a Seagate. *BZZZT!*
It was all moot anyway, because my son’s original hard drive refused to be moved. If I tried it in the other computer it promptly lost its mind and I got all kinds of scary looking “missing boot device” messages on the Blue Screen of Death.
So I gave up and put everything back together in his room… and that’s when the fun started.
All of a sudden Windows 2000 was asking for a logon password when it never had before. My son didn’t remember his password. Logging in as Administrator did no good. So, OK, I’ll try running the Windows 2000 CD and see if I can repair the installation.
Uh…. now the BIOS wants a password too? Aiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeee!!! Sure am glad my son had long since left for work.
In the end, I took my own advice and learned a LOT of new things today. Like how to reset a CMOS password, which is something I already knew how to do in theory but had never tried. Till tonight. And how to get past a Windows password, too, although I haven’t actually done that yet. Oh my, the internet is my friend.
I think, all in all, I’m going to just let things be for the moment and tackle the rest of that project tomorrow. I love fiddling with computers but I’m not about to push my luck.
photo credit: Stoichiometry
January 3, 2008
by infmom
0 comments
I can never make up my mind about “new year’s resolutions.” While the start of a new year is a logical point to make a new start on all kinds of things, the “geography” of the first day of the year is pretty much wrong for most people. There really isn’t anything to mark it as a special new day, other than usually getting the day off work and watching the Rose Parade.
And I tend to cut myself some slack during that time of year, anyway. I figure the weeks surrounding Christmas and New Year’s Day are just flat-out bad times to start something new.
The week after the week New Year’s Day falls in, however, is fair game.
One of the best ways to make a change is to make the new way of doing things a habit. And the best aid to doing that I’ve yet seen is the Habit List from the Productivity501 blog. It’s far better than a to-do list or a simple resolution, because it helps you keep track of your progress in whatever category you choose.
I’m starting a new Habit List next week. I plan to write more, exercise more, and get a lot more done at work. Should be easy to keep an eye on myself and see how I’m doing.
How about you?
December 31, 2007
by infmom
0 comments
You may have noticed a common thread running through this series of messages. That’s not accidental. Because I firmly believe that the best way to take a stand against ignorance is very simple.
Read.
Read as though your life depended on it, because in a very real sense, it does. Read the news in depth. Find a good history book and read that, because if you know your history you’re immunized against claptrap from all sides of the political spectrum. Nobody can tell you that this, or that, present-day politician is “the best” or “the worst” in history, if you already know what those 19th-century guys were up to. Nobody can say, as Pat Buchanan did not so long ago, that 1968 was “the most divisive year in United States history,” and get away with it if his audience knows what happened in 1861.
If you have a library card, use it. If you don’t have a library card, get one. Make a resolution to visit the library often, and to ask the librarians what’s good to read. And once you bring your reading material home, of course, read it.
More than 30 years ago, Isaac Asimov wrote an essay called “The Ancient and the Ultimate.” In it, he presents a carefully-thought-out case for the ultimate multimedia device, which even in the wilds of 1973 was not some exotic electronc gizmo or a product of way-out science-fictional thinking. It was a safe, familiar object, easily obtainable.
A book.
I can’t possibly summarize Asimov’s reasoning on this, but I think he was right. And I think anyone who reads that essay will understand why he was right.  The essay was collected in a book called The Tragedy of the Moon, which is a collection of essays on various subjects. You can find it at any public library. Or, if you really want to be daring, you can order your own copy from Amazon for as little as 89¢ plus shipping.
The great thing about a book of short essays is that if one doesn’t interest you, you can skip to the next one. And within that same book are two other essays of an eye-opening nature, having to do with social conventions rather than scientific method. Once you’ve read “The Ancient and the Ultimate,” then read “By the Numbers” to see what Asimov thought about computers and how he predicted they’d affect our world. And then “Lost in Non Translation” to get a clearer viewpoint about the biases we all share.
Tomorrow starts a new year. Resolve to take a stand against ignorance. Individually and collectively, the future we shape will be better if we do.
Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.December 30, 2007
by infmom
2 Comments
One of the best ways to take a stand against ignorance is at the same time the most difficult. We all believe what we believe, and know what we know. And yet, we become more and more ignorant the longer we stick with the status quo. To take a stand against ignorance, one has to be willing to ask one simple question:
But what if that’s not true?
Think of all the advances human knowledge has made because someone was willing to take what “everybody knows” or “everybody believes” and start asking questions. Where would we be, for example, if Copernicus and Galileo hadn’t considered the idea that the Earth is the center of the universe and hadn’t asked “But what if it that’s not true?” What if doctors had kept thinking that dirty hands were just fine? What if Martin Luther had never looked in the Bible and started thinking about Church doctrine in a whole new way?
Ask the question. Think about the answer. You might just learn something.
And we should likewise ask questions about our own talents and life paths. What may be “true” for us might not be so for our children. We should never force our children into our own mold. Our children have to know more than we know, or human progress stops. What if Bishop Milton Wright had insisted that his sons Wilbur and Orville follow in his footsteps? What if Abraham Lincoln’s parents had made sure their son was also an illiterate hick? What if Benazir Bhutto’s family had forced her into purdah? Think, again, about all the people in the world who achieved something their parents never dreamed of. It may be an apocryphal story, but Leonard Bernstein’s father is supposed to have groused, “How was I supposed to know he’d grow up to be Leonard Bernstein?”
The minute you find yourself thinking that you know all there is, or that what was good enough for your parents is good enough for your children–that’s where ignorance begins. Take a stand. Ask questions. Take a stand against ignorance.
(note: I have disabled comments on this post because for some unknown reason it’s drawn what my daughter would call a cubic ass-load of spam. If you’d like to send me a comment, please use the comment form. Thanks!)
Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.December 29, 2007
by infmom
2 Comments
It’s been a really long time since I graduated from high school. My 40th reunion is coming up in 2008. Yes, I’m old. 🙂
I don’t know if it’s true any more (my kids have been out of high school for years, too) but in those days nearly every high school had a required course in civics. At my school it was called “Modern Problems.” The unfortunate thing about civics classes is that they were almost always taught by coaches, because there just weren’t enough gym classes for coaches to teach, and besides, the administration had to make it look like they weren’t just hiring the guy to coach football.
And thus, since a lot of coaches were marginal at best as teachers (with apologies to Mr. G. who coached wrestling and was a top-notch physics teacher, too) nearly everyone snoozed through the classes and ignored pretty much everything once they’d regurgitated it on a test.
Which, in retrospect, is kind of a shame. Because there really were a few nuggets of valuable information to be had. One of the most important things we studied in civics class was the topic of propaganda techniques.
Of course, in 1967-68, propaganda was something those godless Commies did to “indoctrinate” their hapless masses. We were supposed to be able to see communist doublespeak for what it was. We weren’t asked to analyze what our own “indoctrinators” were spitting out. Which is also a shame. We could have learned a lot by paying attention to the politicians of the day.
In this day and age, one of the most important ways you can take a stand against ignorance is to recognize when you’re being manipulated. The techniques of propaganda are alive and well, even if they’re called “spin doctoring” or some other phrase today. Once you understand the method, it’s a lot more difficult for the spin-meisters to bamboozle you.
A complete discussion of propaganda techniques is beyond the scope of this short essay, but there is an excellent discussion here. Be patient; sometimes the site takes a while to load. Which is a good sign–people are learning what to look for.
Print that list of techniques out and read over it. Then, the next time you hear Warren Windbag, Barton Blowhard, Peter Politician or whoever “bloviating” on a subject, see how many of those propaganda techniques are being used. The more such analyses you do, the more you insulate yourself from claptrap.
This video is par for the course for my high school years, but if you can get past the laugh-out-loud factor, it actually does present propaganda techniques in a format that’s easy to understand. After all, it was being played in civics class.
Edit: Well, apparently the video doesn’t play nice with my theme… gonna have to take my own advice and learn something new today so I can fix that!
December 28, 2007
by infmom
0 comments
When you think about it, we learn least when we listen only to those we agree with. Isolating ourselves in such a comfortable, agreeable environment is natural–but if everyone’s in total agreement and nobody’s willing to start asking inconvenient questions, we isolate ourselves more and more from learning and from the expansion of human knowledge.
Begin paying real attention to the commentary of “the other side.” Don’t just dismiss them with the cuss word du jour and assume you’re not interested in hearing what they have to say. If you won’t go directly to the source, whatever information you might have will be secondhand at best, and filtered through someone else’s prejudices. Don’t you want to make up your mind for yourself? How are you going to do that if you won’t go straight to the source and get the facts for yourself?
I suppose it’s futile to say that one way to take a stand against ignorance is to quit listening to “commentators” in the first place. There’s not a one of them, no matter what they might say, who reports without bias. The whole point behind commentary is making pointed comments. And the commentators stay on the air because flocks of people who don’t know any better are sitting there listening and saying “Yeah!”
So, if you’re a fan of Keith Olbermann, give Bill O’Reilly honest equal time (and vice versa). If your favorite newspaper columnists are Rich Lowry, Mona Charen and Thomas Sowell, give equal reading time to Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd and Richard Cohen. You may well be astonished by what you learn. Years ago, I learned that particular lesson by reading Pat Buchanan’s commentary on the first Gulf War and finding out that he and I were in almost total agreement. If I’d refused to read “the other side,” quite a lesson would have been lost.
There’s a much wider world out there beyond our own little internal “villages” and if we refuse to explore it, we’re no better than ignorant villagers out to do the newcomers in with pitchforks and torches. Take a stand against ignorance–find out for yourself what the other guys are saying.
Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.December 27, 2007
by infmom
0 comments
One of the most important ways to take a stand against ignorance is to never accept secondhand information. Especially when it comes from someone with an axe to grind, and most especially when it comes from someone with whom we agree.
That seems counterintuitive. But think about it. It’s “the other guy” about whom we are naturally skeptical. If he says something, we say “Prove it.” Our own guy, well, what he says is true, isn’t it? And thus our-own-guy can slip us total hogwash again and again and again, and we never bat an eyelash, never check it out. That’s where ignorance begins.
If your favorite commentator Warren Windbag tells you that his arch-rival Barton Blowhard eats dog food for breakfast, don’t take Warren’s word for it. It’s a certainty that Barton has a web site, and if you take time to check it out, what he actually said was “My girlfriend is on a health food kick, and she gave me this new hippie cereal, and now I know what Dog Chow tastes like.”
If Barton Blowhard says that Warren Windbag buys his underwear at Victoria’s Secret, you can bet Warren’s told a tale about taking his wife on a shopping expedition. Commentators who are opinionated enough, and polarized enough to have polar opposites, are going to be the least reliable sources of information about their arch rivals. And consider–if they’re willing to make stuff up when the other guy’s real story is so easily checked, what might they be handing us out of thin air on other issues of the day?
Skepticism shouldn’t just apply to the claims of people we don’t agree with. We should question the people on our own side just as vigorously. It’s amazing what one can learn by saying “Hey, wait a minute” now and again.
Tomorrow I’ll talk more about the ways we can take a stand against ignorance that is spread by “the media.” (Oh, and here’s a factoid that a lot of people don’t know: “Media” is a plural noun. Media are, not is. And people in “the media” are among the worst offenders when it comes to being grammatically correct.)
Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.December 26, 2007
by infmom
0 comments
One of the best times to take a stand against ignorance by looking things up, is when we see or hear something that sounds plausible from a reporter, a columnist or a commentator.
The “Mythbusters” guys have a lot of fun with those things that sound oh-so-plausible but turn out to be nothing but hot air. Don’t let them have all the fun. Start busting myths on your own.
If you regularly listen to people holding forth on current events on the radio, for example, listen to what they tell you, write it down, and look it up. Did your main man Warren Windbag just tell you that it’s snowing in Cleveland? Pull up the Weather Channel and take a look. Did he tell you that Phineas T. Politician just won by a landslide? First thing you ask is “What percentage of the voters in his district actually bothered to vote?” If the “landslide” involves about 10% voter turnout, you’re listening to a grand case of what another guy named Warren called “bloviating.”
The main idea here is, as the song once said, to believe half of what you see and none of what you hear. Don’t take a commentator’s word for anything. Those people stay on the air by playing to people’s fears and ignorance. If you’re going to take a stand against ignorance, the first thing to do is start being massively skeptical of anything anyone pushes in the name of “entertainment.” There is no better armor against claptrap than the simple fact that you know better.
Don’t make Google searches your primary source of information, either. Anyone can publish anything on the internet, and if enough other people are ignorant enough, guess what turns up high on the page in a Google search? If you’re going to start looking for the truth on the internet, start with The Straight Dope. As their slogan says, they’ve been fighting ignorance since 1973. Take notes as you listen–write down a few so-called “facts” and ask questions.
Another good source for myth-busting is Snopes. This site busts rumors, urban legends, and all that nonsense that shows up in those emails your friends insist on sending you. Before you blindly follow directions to forward some alarmist email to everyone on your list–see if it’s anything even close to the truth.
Make a New Year’s resolution to stop believing everything you hear–especially if it comes from someone you agree with. I’ll discuss this in more detail in an upcoming post.
Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.