Shutter Priority

Archive for November, 2008

Thanksgiving morning – I swept up the dog hair from the floor and got the grill ready to start smoking a turkey breast. The kids will be coming over soon with their significant others. Lucky, the older of two German Shepherds, won’t let me out of his sight because he knows that somewhere down the line there will be lots of tasty goodies to beg for.

Taking a break from the festive preparations, I stop and scan the news: massacre in Mumbai, pirates in Somalia, terror alert on the New York transit system, economy in the dumper – you know the list. It would be easy to survey the state of things and ask, what is there to be thankful for? I’m sure a lot of people who are newly unemployed or evicted from their homes are asking that question right now.

There are more than a couple of things to feel down about, even if you still have your job and home. The Republican Party has pretty much crashed and burned in the waning years of the Bush administration. The incoming administration is a huge question mark. The economy seems to teeter on the precipice of a deep recession or even depression. Millions have lost their jobs and gone into foreclosure on their homes. Terror threats seem to pop up in new places with each edition of the evening news. Natural disasters and drought have laid waste to large regions of the country. Crime ravages the major urban centers, and even the honeybees have suffered an epidemic that has drastically reduced their population and threatens agriculture. In short, I can’t remember a time in which the world has appeared more threatening and troubled.

Some people don’t even like the idea of “Thanksgiving” because it implies thanksgiving to God, and they have issues with the whole “God thing.” I don’t suffer from that particular affliction, but I know there’s a lot of it going around.

I don’t want to slip into a sermon or some maudlin “count your blessings” essay. It’s hard to count your blessings when the sheriff arrives to put your stuff on the curb and lock you out of the home in which you expected to retire. There are lots of folks in dire circumstances this day and I want to remain mindful of them. Nevertheless, with a bit of nagging guilt, I feel thankful for some things.

In no particular order…

Marian made a brunch of eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy, one of my favorite meals. I’m thankful for the thirty two years with her. I would probably be in jail by now if she weren’t around.

My new computer is a total screamer, nirvana for a “power user” geek like me. I’m thankful for the jobs that enabled me to buy it, thankful that we still have them, and pray that the economy gets over its funk real soon.

Right now, thousands of young servicemen and women are walking empty but dangerous streets or humping too much gear over a nameless mountain ridge. I’m thankful for them and the country they cared about enough to put themselves in that place.

My kids make me crazy. They sometimes get into trouble or cause problems that disrupt my otherwise orderly existence, but they have given my life meaning and a sense of purpose that I would not have had without them.

I enjoy what is perhaps the most eclectic and diverse menagerie of friends and correspondents in the world, and I can’t count the times that a message or phone call from one of you has lifted me out of a funk, or given me a fresh idea to latch onto for my next crazy quest.

I do have faith, and it is in God. I don’t feel alone in a hostile universe. That’s one thing you can feel thankful for even when everything else is going to hell in a hand basket.

It’s a beautiful day, bright sunlight and warm for late November. Thor, the younger German Shepherd is curled up and sleeping on the back porch. I scratch his ears when I go out to add apple wood chips to the fire smoking the turkey. I think I have a head cold coming on, but otherwise my health is good.

One thing I hate about the recent election is that the grand notion of hope was co-opted into a cheesy campaign slogan. Hope is more than a slogan. Tomorrow the sun will come up. There will be new mysteries to explore, new jokes, new jobs and headaches. There will be possibilities. That’s hope. The logical opposite of hope is despair, and I prefer hope to despair. Maybe I’m a bit foolish in that, but it’s my choice.

I hope this finds you well. Happy Thanksgiving.

Yeah, I was being a bad boy – I was trying to find a keygen for a piece of software that is no longer sold, supported or available from any source, Sound Forge 6. This is a helpful audio utility, and I had misplaced my installation disk. Regardless, I went searching for a keygen – a piece of software that generates serial numbers – and I paid the price. I downloaded one “keygen” that turned out to be a Trojan, and suddenly, my brand new Core Duo Quad was infected with a nasty damned Trojan program. My anti-virus program, BitDefender, kept the Trojan from completely installing itself, but it couldn’t remove it.

I searched and searched and searched. Finally, I found Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. This program is shareware. It works completely in the freeware form. I downloaded the free version of Anti-Malware, ran it, and it successfully cleaned the Trojan off of my computer.

Folks, this thing worked so well, and cleaned up my computer so well, that I paid the $24.95 to register the program just from simple appreciation for what these folks are doing. I didn’t have to. The freeware version did the job, and I could have slinked away into the darkness with all the goodies without paying a dime. Having suffered Trojan infections before, I know how difficult it is to remove some of these things, and to be honest, $24.95 is more than fair for getting one of these things out of your hair. I would have paid more.

So, if your computer is acting weird, you browser directing you to sites you don’t want to go to, your anti-virus programs going crazy, check out Malwarebytes. These folks deserve our support.

This was done on a portable recorder and a cheap mic, so the sound is not quite as clean as I’d like, but the subject is important, domestic violence.

 Police Cars in the Street: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Alex starting his $400 salvage Nissan 240 SX for the first time. He really loves his cars. It’s easy to get him to talk about them, hard to get his to stop. They really capture his imagination, much the way that words and pictures captures mine. He has more or less taken over my garage for his shop. I think it’s fun, and occasionally I get some free repair work on my cars, so it’s a win-win.

It’s a rare moment when you get to see real history playing out across the pixels of your television screen. This night was one. The junior senator from Illinois has accomplished the impossible, and the nation has moved into a new era. There are some good things about this, many of them emotional and psychological. Finally, our fellow Americans with dark skin have received the affirmation they have needed for a very long time. There’s nothing wrong with that. In the long run, it may make life better and healthier in our communities. Perhaps a large segment of our young people will stop destroying themselves and begin to realize that there are good possibilities for their lives. It’s hard to feel bad about that.

The rest of the world will be shocked and forced to reassess their ideas about America. Our friends will marvel. Our enemies will be forced to pause and consider the frightening agility of our culture.

I can’t help but believe that the genius of America has shown itself again: we have done the unexpected. Our democracy has surprised us. Our crazy angels have carried the day.

I’m not wild about Obama. I wasn’t wild about McCain either. Obama has set the expectations very high, and if history is any measure, such messianic hopes as those inspired by Obama are doomed to disappointment. I remember the campaign of Bill Clinton and all of the lofty promises he made. I also remember how few of those promises were fulfilled. I notice that the pundits are already drawing comparisons between Clinton and Obama, and promising that Obama isn’t going to make the same "mistakes" that Clinton did. But, when you pin hopes as high as Obama has, disappointments are inevitable. How long before they set in, and a whole new generation of voters is cursed with the same cynicism that has infected us?

I feel like I have a migraine coming on. This election thing has been going on for so long and I have been so focused on it, that my brain doesn’t seem to know what to do or how to turn itself off. Emptiness. I bought a new computer today. Tomorrow morning, I will drag myself out of bed and resume planning how I will migrate all of my software and files to a new box. I will be scanning the web for a sense of how things are going. I will do my work and all of the other ordinary things I did yesterday. Not much will be changed for me.