Farm News 06-29-08

Sunday morning, after chores,
Suzette's six bunnies opened their eyes this week.

I haven't written anything for this week. Laziness triumphs!

Farm News 06-22-08

Sunday morning, long after chores, 80°
Weight: 208 lbs. Bah!
Barn News

Suzette has six bunnies, born a week ago last Saturday. They should have their eyes open in a day or two.
There are three goose eggs remaining in the incubator after the last candling session with Jesse. He takes the egg into a dark room and then presses a small flashlight against the shell on the side away from him. The light shines through the shell, showing the developing gosling as a shadow. Jesse is quite clever at candling, as this process is called, and I like being able to take out dead eggs before they start stinking.
Last Sunday we sent Dave off on the endless trip. About thirty family and friends gathered at the ranch to wish Dave, “Happy trails.” Several people talked about how nice he was, and he was a nice guy. No one mentioned it, but many people were pleased he had finally quit drinking. Dave was often a maudlin drunk, which became tiresome, but, like many alcoholics, when he wasn't drinking he was a great guy.
We had a new sideshow at the send-off gathering: Dave's ashes were parceled out into small, neatly made packages tied with rattan, each a bit larger than the size of a gift wrapped condom. People attending the gathering took home with them a packet of Dave's ashes. One packet of Dave's ashes will go to the Ware Cemetery at Ware's Grove, Illinois, to join him with many distant cousins. I'd like for the same thing to be done with my ashes, it seems to be a way to sort of 'spread yourself out' after death.

Linux

I've been using Linux for several years to run the GeezerNet.com web server, Geezer1.server. Geezer1.server is an aging Micron Pentium Pro box, upgraded with a modern motherboard and big hard drives. At the moment it sits quietly next to my desk, disconnected from both power and internet. When plugged in, it grinds and growls for a few minutes, and then springs into action, answering internet requests for the web sites www.GeezerNet.com and www.GeezerNet.US.
'Springing into action', in this case, means starting the operating system called Linux. Linux is completely independent of Microsoft Windows. Linux if free, open source, software. For the life of the internet, Linux has been the operating system for most servers, such as dear old Geezer1.server. There, it dispenses web pages and moves email around, operating for years without failures. It's pretty solid, technically, and very stolid in it's appearance.
Recently, Ubuntu 8.04 appeared. Ubuntu is a 'distribution' of Linux, whatever that means, but Ubuntu 8.04 is not stolid. It works, it's straightforward, and you don't have to leave Windows to install it. You can install it like any other program, and the next time you reboot your computer, you will have the choice of rebooting into either Ubuntu or Windows. Choose Ubuntu and your computer boots up Linux.
My primary word processor is Open Office Writer. I use it to write Farm News. Between the time when I wrote the above paragraph, and the time I am writing this paragraph, I rebooted my computer from Windows to Linux. When Linux had booted, I opened up my primary word processor, but the operating system underneath all this is now Linux. Then I went to the folder /host/, which is the same as C:\ in Windows. After fiddling around a bit I opened up this document, the same one I was working on in Windows, and wrote this paragraph.
The point is, Linux accommodates Windows nicely, and, in the cases of Open Office, Thunderbird, and FireFox, the same programs will run on both operating systems. Installing a Linux system is now within reach of non-techies. The most difficult part of the process is creating a CD that will then install Linux on your system. Send me an email if you want me to send you a CD that will install Linux.

Books

Resolution by Robert B. Parker

I like Parker's westerns. This one is a sequel to Appaloosa, which I also liked, continuing the discussion between the lead characters about the ethics of shooting people.

Nothing to Lose by Lee Child

The plot of this book was implausible, as was the setting: two towns in eastern Colorado named Hope and Despair. The action was okay, though, and I'd read another one of his books. He's not one of my favorite authors, even though his implausible settings are, nevertheless, biologically and celestially accurate, i.e., he does not find mesquite growing in Montana, or see a full moon rise after midnight.

Farm News 06-08-08

Sunday morning, after chores, 80°

Weight: 204 – Two weeks in a row at 204!

I have been experiencing a major attack of laziness and not writing much. Next week I will be attending a memorial for Dave and there will be no Farm News. After that, I hope to become productive, again.

Barn News

This place is becoming overrun by cats. Shotgun is about to wean a litter of four, of which one already has a new home; two more cats are visibly pregnant; and Martha Minor is coming in heat. Kittens are great fun and I enjoy them, but I wish they would arrive one or two at a time instead of four to eight.

Several of the cats have taken to hiding below a low-hanging bird feeder and then leaping up to catch birds. The cats are seldom successful, but I moved the feeder up a couple of feet, anyway. The birds sing and dance for the dinners, which is more than the cats do.

Books

To Begin the World Anew by Bernard Bailyn

To Begin the World Anew, subtitled The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders, doesn't seem to make a point. Bailyn discusses the political lives of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, and then looks at The Federalist Papers. With Jefferson, he gives a cursory overview of some of the seeming conflicts in Jefferson's thought. Most of the section on Franklin is devoted to remarks about the paintings made of Franklin while he was in Paris. The section on The Federalist Papers was the most interesting, but it didn't provide any brilliant insights.

I was looking forward to reading about Franklin, who is something of a paper cutout figure in most history textbooks, but I wasn't interested in Bailyn's commentary on paintings of Franklin.

The Second Gun by James Clifton Cobb

This is a good western, suitable for young adult readers. The hero is a plucky teen, an orphan who makes his way from cleaning spittoons in a bar to owning a mining company. In the process he kills only one man, and that act bothers him for the rest of his life. Recommended.

Pecos Crossing by Elmer Kelton

A story of two young cowboys, one grows up and the other doesn't. Kelton always tells a good tale.

Death and Honor by W. E. B. Griffin

Honor Bound is set in Argentina during the Second World War, where the Nazi SS, the US OSS, and the Argentine BIS engaged each other in three-way spy games. It is the fourth novel in the Honor Bound series, which begins with Honor Bound. I recommend reading them in sequence.

Farm New 06-01-08

Sunday evening, after chores, the internet link was down all day.

Weight: 204 lbs.

Barn News

Drat! Something took Bobby, the gosling. Bobby was my favorite gosling. He was well educated, having been to school twice, and would eat from my hand. Like all young geese, he looked like a T. rex with a duck's head, but he was friendly and cheerful. I”m tired of feeding the predators and am going to take steps to reduce the toll. I know that unless I do something another gosling will disappear each night until they are all gone.

Insubordination

"No, sir."

Sunshine, a friend, is the most sardonic, cynical person I know. He also is quadriplegic, which inhibits most men from punching him in the nose when he is at his worst.

Sunshine works in a call center, responding to the desperate cries of the of the distraught who are trying to obtain an intelligent response from Medicare. Sunshine, on the telephone, is empathetic, reverberating to the problems of the callers. Thus, when a 90 year old blind wman called, Sunshine became almost blind to the rest of creation.

Everyone who knows Sunshine, including those who work with him, know that he is subject to brief empathetic trances, states where the normal rules of reality do not apply within his space. It's not really a problem, except in a bureaucracy.

It did become a problem when his supervisor sat down to observe his performance. Mr. Supervisor, Sunshine said, had a wife, three kids, a mortgage, and just wanted to keep his job. Thus, Mr. Supervisor was sitting next to Sunshine, performing a monthly performance rating observation, when the 90 year old war widow from Wisconsin called on the phone, crying. And, in a natural, beyond his control, response, Sunshine fell into an empathetic state, and existed only to serve a lonely, 90 year old, befuddled woman.

Gently, deftly, Sunshine began to guide the old woman thrugh the intricacies of indentifying herself and her problem in such a way that she and the problem would fit into the problem-solving capabilities of the call center. Finally, all the boxes were checked and blanks filled, except for the Medicare number on her card. She didn't know the number and couldn't see the card to read it. The number was not essential to resolving her problem, but the script clearly stated that, when the caller couldn't supply a Medicare number, the conversation was to be closed down.

Sunshine looked at his supervisor and said, “No, sir.”

Books

I haven't finished any books this week. That's what happens when I move from mysteries and westerns to non-fiction.