Leaving, I guess

Hey, so I've recently become obsessed with hosting and owning all of my own data, so I'm starting a new blog.

You can reach me now at ryan.waldroop.net

see you there!

Things in Fours

I've been tagged by Mr. Shope.

Four jobs I've had:
1. Exterminator
2. Janitor
3. Freelance Computer Technician
4. Call Center Worker

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. The Patriot
2. Men in Black (I and II)
3. Pirates of the Caribbean (all of them)
4. Lord of the Rings (all of them)

Four places I have lived:
1. Fort Mill/Indian Land
2. Edgemoor
3. Indian Land
4. umm...that's it.

Four shows I love:
1. JAG
2. Boy Meets World
3. Family Guy
4. This is a tossup between Red Dwarf and The IT Crowd

Four places I've vacationed:
1. Townsend, Tennessee (the quiet side of the Smokies)
2. Walt Disney World
3. All over VA, PA, DC, and MD seeing Civil War battlefields and Lee's Retreat to Appomattox
4. The Senior Cruise to Cozumel and Grand Cayman.

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. Mashed Potatoes
2. Filet Mignon au Poivre at the Parson's Table
3. Cheesecake
4. Anything else at the Parson's Table

Four sites I visit daily:
1. Gmail
2. Wired
3. Slashdot
4. Google Reader

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Disney
2. The Parson's Table
3. Working ON computers (making money) instead of WITH computers (writing papers and answering phones)
4. Smoking my pipe.

If you read this, consider yourself tagged.

Response to Josh's Entry on Immigration

I just wrote (what I think) is a good response to Josh Shope's blog entry on immigration. He makes great points, I just wanted to point out some other things to consider. I've already posted this response to his blog, so some of you may have already read it. A lot of my ideas come from this video on immigration.

Josh also wrote another immigration blog entry that I commented on.

Now enjoy your feature presentation!

I agree with most of what you said, Josh, and many of the comments. We should love ALL people, because they are a part of God's creation. Also, as Jerolin said, we as Americans must insist they obey the laws and come here legally. Whether those laws are correct, moral, good, or stupid should be saved for another debate.

While Mexicans (for example) are indeed very poor, they are still somewhere in the top 25% (I think) of the world's wealth. Where does that leave America when it comes to helping the rest of the world? I'm sure we can all agree that as Americans we are very lucky, and we should help the poor and oppressed of this world. **BUT bringing them all here is not the solution!**

What I think many of you are failing to see is that America is what America is because we have always been a very LARGE (in land mass) country with relatively FEW citizens. If America allowed the bottom 25% of the world's population to move here for a better life, there would be NO better life for ANYONE...because there would then be about 2 Billion people living here. Just think: the bottom 25% of the world's poorest people is five times larger than our current population!

So what do we do about all of those poor people? We can't let them starve, they deserve a better life, and we can't let them all move here. Well, there are other rich countries...but those are relatively small and crowded as it is. See Great Britain, Germany, Japan, and the more developed parts of China, for example. The ONLY thing we can do is aid them where they are. We have to do a better job protecting the oppressed peoples of Africa from the ruling regime. We have tried sending money, food, and machine equipment over there, but it all ends up being taken by a dictator.

And...Well I kinda forgot where I was going with all of this...but you get the point. We need to help people, but moving them to another part of the world is not the way to do it.

Barack Obama

I think Barack just (well, actually a while back) won my vote for 2008. It's going to take a crazy freaking awesome Republican to make me change my mind.

Barack Obama on Iraq

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Yo, Yo!

So Christmas was a TONNE (yes, a metric ton!) of fun! Laura and I did a lot of traveling: 23 Dec 06 with my dad, then Santa came to his house for Christmas Eve Morning, then we stopped to see Laura's mom's parents on the way to her dad's parent's house out in the Westminster/Walhalla area, then we got back to my mom's house at about 12:30am Christmas Eve/Christmas Morning, where we spent most of the day opening presents and eating, then went over to my grandparent's house (even though they were there for Christmas morning) for EVEN MORE PRESENTS. whew...Yeah, my family does a really big Christmas.

Just before New Year's, my grandfather was hospitalized because of breathing difficulties, and we later found out he had a heart attack. We're not sure when he had the heart attack (I think it was in the hospital because the stupid nurses wouldn't give him his medicine and he got upset). We're also not sure if he had the heart attack because of his breathing (emphysema), or vice versa.

My Paw-Paw still made me go to Westminster with Laura for New Year's. Anyone remember what my resolution was last year?

My New Year's Resolution is to kiss a girl at midnight next New Year's Eve... if not New Year's '07, then definitely by '08.

Hooray! I kept my resolution! Laura and I kissed right after the ball dropped, then she fell asleep. :-P

Class has started back now, and I've got a very busy schedule trying to juggle work and school. I'll be at winthrop for about 12 hours every monday and wednesday. I think classes will go ok though - as long as I do my work. And I won't get to see Laura a whole lot because of my 18 hours of school and 15 hours of work plus breaks between classes, so I *should* be able to buckle down and get my stuff done. Emphasis on *SHOULD* ;-P

Also please come to Something Else Bible Study. I will be leading a discussion (I hope) on the Passion Week, and a harmony of such. (Thanks to Mr. King for the Bible Class project!) We will be meeting Wednesday Nights at 8pm starting next week. Hope you can make it! :-D

Well that was entirely to long for you to even want to read. Now back to "work." If you're bored, please listen to my podcast the "Weekend Meltdown"

Update, plus boring Linux crap

First, a word from our sponsers...well, my sponser...well, myself:

How about checking out the Weekend Meltdown, eh? That would be fun, right? yeah...head on over. And join the forum! Please? Pretty please with a cherry on top?

I went to Trinity's 1944 USO Christmas show last night. That was cute! They had Mr. Gold playing Kaiser, the King of Swing. He was a big band director/comedian from that time period. Also, be sure to come check out Trinity's game tonight as they take on New Covenant.

Now some techy stuff: So I found my windows XP install CD, and am re-updating to SP 2. Here a few reasons why, not that most people who read this would even care. Part of it is a repeat of stuff I said in my last post, but really, just skip it if you don't care about linux.

From my recent slashdot post:
I just installed Linux again on my Gateway 400vtx laptop [as you've read]. I've tried many many distros of linux, including (but not limited to): Knoppix, Fedora, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Linspire, and (most recently) openSuSE. Last night, I finally found my XP install disc and today I've been re-updating to SP2. Here's why:

Ubuntu (live cd) and SuSE wouldn't even boot for a while, thanks to not being able to see a literally burned up internal wireless network card that I don't even use because it's wireless B. Why would they freeze during the boot instead of just booting and forgetting about it? Knoppix works, so that just doesn't make sense since SuSE has MS backing them now. I manually removed the internal card, and bingo - it starts up. Of course, this isn't really a major problem with Linux since I got it fixed; however, XP just *works.*

Knoppix was the ONLY one to support my Netgear WG511 PCMCIA network card right out of the box. And by support I mean it works fairly well, but not like it does under Windows. I couldn't even get SuSE to install the drivers for it because it was missing a C compiler or something. The same lack of C compiler also prevented me from using gaim. Of course, this is actually more of a problem with Netgear not offering Linux drivers (something I didn't even consider or know about several years ago when I bought the card). With Windows, it's easy: just install a little .exe (I couldn't connect to the internet to get the drivers automatically - I need my wireless card for that, which isn't install...catch 22), and plug in the card. Again, XP just *works.*

My biggest problem with EVERY version of Linux was that NONE of them (as in no Distro I've ever used) has supported my video card, an integrated Intel 82852/82855 WG/WGE piece of $#!+. And by supported I mean it works at 800x600 on Linux, but 1024x768 on Windows. I tried everything: drivers, editing my X11 files, etc. Once again, this is more of Intel's fault for not offering decent drivers (even though they had some labeled "linux"), but XP just *works.*

Another major problem was seeing my ATP ToughDrive 2GB usb thumbdrive. Linux could open my Sandisk cruzer micro just fine, but not my ATP. I didn't have time to fool with that, mostly because I was too sick of 800x600.

Now I am happily running XP again. Don't get me wrong - I *LOVE* open source, particularly Gaim, OpenOffice, VLC, and Firefox. I've used Windows 3.1 and up through XP, and the others have been bug ridden and would simply crash the system if a single file screwed up. XP rarely crashes on me. I haven't used Vista, but doubt I ever will because of the insane requirements for it. In some ways I miss my few short days of using nothing but Linux - particularly *not* having to use the mouse. I liked just using the keyboard to get around. My next computer will either be an Apple (a friend just WON a macbook pro intel core 2 duo and I am so jealous!) or I will build a system generic enough to run Linux (with Beryl...oh so pretty!).

So am I a Microsoft XP fanboy - No. I HATE IE, the Zune, MS Word, and any Windows OS (except XP).
Am I an XP fanboy - Maybe. But that's more because it works *well* for me, and nobody makes my hardware work with linux.

------------
< /end slashdot post>

See? I told you that you wouldn't care. I'm out. Peace.

Stupid Linux, Stupid Gateway...GRR!

Do you ever do something and find out it simply won't work, then think "Hey, I haven't tried THAT in a year, maybe it'll be different!"

The definition of insanity is to do something repeatedly and expect a different outcome each time.

For some UNGODLY REASON, I decided to INSTALL LINUX on my laptop AGAIN, which I KNOW will NOT work...and I did this WHILE I was writing a paper for my final exam which is PAST DUE.

STUPID, STUPID, STUPID...

I see you people and my friends using Linux and OS X, and I think "that's so nice...I wanna do that too..." Man...As much as I hate Microsoft the company, Windows JUST WORKS(tm) on my laptop, and nothing else does. You can argue all day about other computers and other systems, but my laptop must be REALLY "Special" (as in education :P)

Next time I try that...just shoot me or something...I don't know...:(