A. P. Lawrence Blog

Network Troubleshooting

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 02:57:00 +0000

I have an ebook about Unix and Linux troubleshooting but someday I'd like to tackle network troubleshooting specifically.

This A non-technical guide to understanding and fixing TCP/IP problems on a network is a very rough draft of what I'd like to cover in that.

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:28:00 +0000

There are at least two amazing things about Dragon Dictation. The first is that it actually works very, very well. The second is that it is a free iTunes download for iPod, iPhone and iPad.

More at http://hubpages.com/hub/Dragon-Dictation-for-iPod-and-iPad

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:08:00 +0000

I suppose I should also mention my WordPress Sites

Pretty Much Retired

Unixish

Working For Youself

A dozen or two posts,,

Not using this much

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 19:19:00 +0000

I haven't been posting here often.

Every now and then I post something at Oak Point Community and of course I am still posting at APLawrence.

No atheists in foxholes

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:47:00 +0000

The only reasonable response to that stupidity is

"More interesting is that there are no dead theists"

Not that 80% or more will be capable of understanding what that means.

Some comments from another site

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:30:00 +0000

At a recent "Bering in Mind Post" , a comment said :

while I can't be absolutely certain there is no God, I can be *very* certain that your particular notion of God is implausible if not almost certainly false.

I don't agree with that. I CAN be quite certain that there are no gods. I can't be certain that this universe wasn't created by a sentient being, and I can't be certain that the physics of whatever universe that being might have existed in aren't wildly different than those that apply here. I can't even be certain that this imagined creator isn't clinically insane and THINKS that it is a "god".

But I CAN be certain that there are no supernatural beings (unless you want to overload the word to include that different universe I posited above).

I CAN be absolutely certain that even if such a being did exist, I owe it nothing and have no reason to "worship it" - even if it is again insane enough to desire that from me. In fact, if you presented me with absolute proof that such a creature did exist, I would feel nothing but pity for it and absolute contempt for those of you who continued to grovel at its feet.

If any of theists really thought about this, they'd come to the same conclusion. As they do not, I can only conclude that they do NOT think. Whether that is because they are not equipped for that function or are wilfully refusing to do so can only be determined on an individual basis.

Being so many theists are unthinking, whether willfully or because of impotence, let me spell it out for you.

Let's pretend that I am a physicist from some future century and that I can create another universe. Moreover, I can fine tune the physics of that universe and even arrange things so that intelligent life will develop within.

As I control the physics, I control time: a billion years in that Universe is but minutes or hours to me. Not only that, but I can interfere with events there, adjust the passage of time, effectively do whatever I want: I can play "god".

Would I? Oh, I'm sure some would, but I would not. I might watch and learn, and I might be tempted (like right now I'd be tempted to give all you theists a lesson in reality), but I'd stand firm as a moral being. I would not interfere.

In that universe that I created, unwitting fools like you would be fervently praying daily and frantically trying to convince others to do the same. If I were not a moral being, I'd reach in and snuff you into non-existence.

But your god? Your Invisible Boopy? Is it anything like me? No, it is petty, vengeful, nasty, cruel and very ready to interfere - your religious works make that plain.

So - it's plain to me that *I* am a superior creature to the being you imagine. WHY WOULD I WORSHIP SUCH A THING?

Dotting the I's

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 16:46:00 +0000

I've been finding income in my Adsense reports that I can't account for (see Analyzing Adsense performance with Google Analytics Part Two. I really can't imagine that's it is coming from here, but, just in case, I added channels to these ads (see Workaround to Add Custom Channels into Blogger AdSense Page Element Widget
).

Try, try again

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 17:30:00 +0000

A few years back I tried starting several other blogs. It just didn't work for me, probably because I was trying to keep up the one post per day pace that I have done at APLawrence.com for so many years. I did manage to do that for three months at the new sites, but it burned me out and I let them fade away.

I'm trying again, but with a much looser attitude toward posting frequency at the satellite sites. That should work a lot better..

My E-Books

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:55:00 +0000

I have three E-Books:

Psst - Wanna Work for Yourself
Unix and Linux Troubleshooting
The Hard Truth about Easy Money on the Internet

You can buy all three here for for a special price of $19.95 or they are available individually ($9.95 each) at the links above.

Turkey week

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:01:00 +0000

That Fleet Street Games shut down when the stock market tanked - investors pulled out and that was it. I had pulled almost $500 out of it before it died, so I can't complain.

Put Psst - wanna work for yourself up and am working on "Troubleshooting Unix and Linux" now.

Good Poker site

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:05:00 +0000

I've been playing at http://www.fleetstreetgames.com/

This isn't gambling - you are competing for prize money.

August 31, 2008 there's a $50K tournament.. free to enter..

Just a reminder

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 14:41:00 +0000

See http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.asp

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Just something to think about as you head for the polls.

Fit as a Fiddle

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:21:00 +0000

I don't want another damn Republican, I sure as heck don't want another Bush clone, and I've heard too much of John McCain sucking up to the Religious Right, but even if none of that bothered me at all, he really is too damn old.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2008/SNL_breaking_news_John_McCain_crazy_0316.html

Give it up, Hillary

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 19:04:00 +0000

I would have voted for you, Hillary, even though both of my daughters felt Obama was the better choice. But now, your stubbornness is ticking me off: for the good of this country, get the heck out of the way.

I don't really care whether it's you or him: I just don't want the ancient Bush clone elected, and I'm afraid if you two keep squabbling that's just what we'll get.

So step aside. Please.

How the mind works (not)

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 11:07:00 +0000

A post at "Geeks are Sexy" shows a video where a scientist describes how she felt as she experienced a massive stroke in her brain. It's interesting, but the woman who had the stroke draws ridiculous conclusions. She thinks that she was connected to the rest of the universe, all living beings.. very mystical.

If I told you that I got stinking drunk and saw pink elephants, would you think the elephants were real, that my intoxication permitted me to see a world normally not visible to us? Of course not.

But babble about mystical interconnections under similar circumstances and everybody gets all teary-eyed..

Frustrated by Widgets

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:13:00 +0000

I'm very frustrated by Widgets. Widgets are clumsy and extremely user unfriendly - not the Widgets themselves, but rather the way Apple has chosen to integrate them with the rest of OS X.

What's wrong with Widgets? First there's that "all or nothing" mentality: hit your Widget activation key (F12 usually) and your screen fills with all your active widgets. I may only want to see one, but I get them all.

Apple,let my Widgets go

Social Conformity and Religion

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 12:28:00 +0000

I was reading http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/socinf/conform.html and particularly thinking about the Asch tests and wondering how much that has to do with religious belief. I can't help but think that most modern people would find this insanely ridiculous if there wasn't so much popular support for it..

Mitt Romney

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 11:07:00 +0000

I was listening to Mitt the other day - he says yes, he does take his faith literally, but
whenever he was asked about any of the more insane tenets of that faith, he deflected
the question and said that the Mormon Church was "better prepared" to provide
such details.

I suppose there are two possibilities here. One is that Mitt really does not know
exactly what it is he takes literally - he just knows that he's supposed to believe
it and he's ready to do so on demand. Yes, that's pretty laughable, but it
really is possible.

The other thought is that Mitt knows how ridiculous his faith is and therefore
doesn't want to discuss it out loud.

Well, ALL faith suffers from the same problem - except yours, of course. All
the objectively outrageous mythology you swallowed whole is never ridiculous.
No, no, of course not. I certainly never meant to imply that..

I think Mitt does know. And like all other religious people, he accepts the
nonsense aspects of his religion - in his case, apparently completely literally
if we take him at his word.

I ask seriously, hoping that those of you who are godsoaked but take it with
large does of salt would think about just what kind of fool really does "take
it literally". Examine the stories your faith tells and imagine someone who
absolutely believes every bit of it. Do you really want that sort of idiot for
your President? Really?

I have no friends?

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:44:00 +0000

Well, that's what my YouTube page (http://www.youtube.com/user/tonypcunix) tells me..

That's harsh..

Birthday bash

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:00:00 +0000

Darren Rowse over at Problogger has a big prize contest going on right now.

Obviously he's building a lot of publicity for his site (for example, a link post like this is necessary for this morning's entry), but there is a lot of good stuff, he does have a worthwhile site anyway, so why not?

Atheism growing?

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 12:56:00 +0000

This morning ABC news did a little segment on this. I wonder whether the numbers really are growing or if it's just that more people are willing to "come out". I've often felt that there are a lot more atheists than reported, and wonder if more will be more open about it..

It's "gods"

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 09:47:00 +0000

Yesterday I listened to Robin Young interview Greg Epstein. He's the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard who wants to create a "community for non-believers". They both annoyed me, mainly because Robin kept saying things like "So Humanists don't believe in God" and he'd come right back with, "No, Robin, we don't believe in God".

The proper response is "No, Robin, we don't believe in gods. Not Roman gods, not your god, not any gods."

Unimportant? No, it isn't: responding as he did makes it sound like you aren't supporting someone as a political candidate. It validates the other person's belief system and actually makes it sound as though if you did believe, well, obviously that god is the one you'd choose.

Robin also ticked me off by saying very stupid things like "Don't you ever have doubt? I mean, riding on an airplane?" and "I'll get out of the way before the lightning bolt hits". If I didn't know her for the intelligent and thoughtful interviewer she is, I'd perhaps be less upset: this behavior was unexpected.

Beyond that, I'm ambivalent about any need for a Humanist community such as he envisions. Yes, atheists need community just like everyone else. But do we need to be insular and segregate ourselves from others in a church-like space? I don't think so.. but then again, there's nothing definitely wrong about the idea..

I was pleased to hear that 20% of young people now profess non-belief, and that Pete Stark (a Congress Critter from CA) has "come out" as a Humanist. No doubt he'll be run out of office, but it's a ray of hope for sanity..

Backup

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:13:00 +0000

I'd really like to do more backups.. I do backup my most important stuff, but there is a lot of other data I wouldn't like losing that just doesn't get saved off.

I looked at Internet backup, but even though it's getting very reasonable, it's still more than I want to spend right now.. I guess the old hard drive will have to last a little longer..

Golf Cart

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 14:16:00 +0000

This summer we bought a golf cart. Very handy, easy to care for.. but now winter is coming and there is a slight problem: this boopy needs to be plugged in to keep the batteries from freezing.

Ideally, I'd like to keep this in the garage. However, there isn't room for both the car and the golf cart, even if I park the cart sideways at the end - it almost makes it, but needs a few more inches..

So: plan B: have an electrician put another plug at the end of the garage, put down a few patio blocks to park it on, put a cover on it, and let it ride out the storms. I'm not happy about that, but the only other choice is to add a shed onto the garage which could easily cost $10,000.00 (because of architectural controls at our community). I'd sell the cart before I'd do that.

JFK: Reckless Youth

noreply@blogger.com (Anthony) — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:28:00 +0000

I've been reading Nigel Hamilton's JFK Reckless Youth and have mixed feelings.

There's an incredible amount of detail in these 800 plus pages, and that makes it wonderful. At the same time, do I really need to know every minor sexual adventure JFK ever had? I'm not prudish, and certainly JFK's sexuality is an important part of understanding him, but it does get boring, especially in the sections that cover his teen years.

On the positive side, that same exhaustive digging provides rich portraits of the period he grew up in. For anyone fond of history, this is great stuff.