Okay, so we have a 5 year plan to move out of the US.
We have a few main points of looking at so far…
Wellington, New Zealand. I would prefer somewhere along the Kapiti Coast if I could get a job there as well since it is so far from Wellington’s CBD, but still part of the Wellington Region.
Vancouver, Canada. Not sure where specifically to look at here. I was thinking North Vancouver, but that really depends on the job location.
To that list I keep thinking of adding Melbourne, Australia.

Big congratulations to the All Blacks for winning the Tri Nations Cup against the Wallabies 28 to 24 in Brisbane Australia.
I don’t follow Rugby enough to know if the All Blacks made the right choice by going with Graham Henry as head coach again over the Wallabies coach Robbie Deans. At the time it looked like the public was in favor of Robbie Deans, but I don’t know how they are reacting in New Zealand now that Henry pulled off the Tri-Nations… of course the real test will be if the All Blacks can win the Rugby World Cup when it happens next in 2011…(In 2007, they didn’t even make it to the final 4.)

First let’s talk about Palin… One has to worry when the VP choice is far more popular than the actual nominee. People are leaving after she speaks while McCain is talking, and when appearing separately, she draws far bigger and enthusiastic crowds. It’s sort of as confusing as people loving American Idol over far better TV choices… Then there is the fact she tried to ban books, then tried to fire the librarian for not complying… and other abuses of power (firing the guy for not firing her ex-brother in law… her staff not complying with the subpoenas)… hey she’ll fit right in with the Bush administration…
Then there is the offshore drilling. I have to say I like the provisions the Dems put it, let the White House and Republicans rip into it… What’s wrong with having the state it is about to be used in approve it? What’s wrong with having to actually drill the spots they have now before adding new ones? Nothing with any of them aside from the fact it doesn’t favor the oil companies.
Now to the AIG bailout. Okay, so lots of companies all around the world would have been hurt if it failed. The problem I have is that unless we take the money out of the accounts of the board and other executives who made the bad decisions that led the company down this path, than they have been rewarded for gross incompetency. I would at least bring huge civil suits against the board and the rest of upper management to help offset any burden the government will have. It’s would almost be like bailing out Ford or the other big 3. They were the ones who bet heavily on big cars, trucks and SUVs without a good range of smaller to midsized cars for when the economy went south… and they had to know that sooner or later it would go south and gas prices would jump high… yet these boards and executives make millions for being idiots. We shouldn’t reward people for being stupid, and when their decisions touch as many lives and companies as AIG did, then those idiots need punished. Of course the reality is that they will walk away multi millionaires, and be given charge of another company, where they can do it all over again, because these idiots never learn… Look at the big 3 who had the same problem when gas prices jumped in the 70s, corrected but went right back to making the big cars and trucks that got them in trouble then.

With a full blown mortgage crisis going on, there are many plans out there to save the homes of American’s. This is mine.
The government forms a corporation and this corporation buys the loan of the approved applicant. This loan is, mostly, a very very low interest loan. There are however a few gotchas that come with the program.

Creekstone Farms Premium Beef in Kansas wanted to start testing all its meat for Mad Cow disease (currently only 1% of our meat is tested for the incurable disease that lays waste to the human brain), but the Bush administration stopped them because larger meat packing firms feared that if Creekstone Farms Premium Beef succeeded in getting better sales because they were advertising they were testing all their meat, then they would have to follow suit and start doing expensive tests themselves… in other words the meat packing industry feared the open market and asked the Bush administration. (Story.)
Since McCain is a twin of Bush, I would expect more of the same from him.
US beef (and a range of other meat) is already banned in many countries outside the US (even China refuses to let our meat in), I think this will just solidify their ban. (The EEC bans US beef do to the hormone treatments most US meat growers give their cows to speed the growth process.) I guess we can chalk up another reason to move to New Zealand as fast as possible, safer food.
Anyhow, I find it amazing that the Bush administration would actually take steps to block the free market from allowing proven safer beef from reaching the market, especially when the company was going to pay for it itself.

Yes, Thirty Dollars. That is what ZYZZYX RD. made in its box office run. To be fair it was ran in just one theater for one week just to meet SAG requirements, as the director wanted foreign distribution before it would be tackled by domestic distribution… Actually, after you take out the $10 refund to the make-up artist and her friend, the film made only $20 in theaters domestically.

I just saw a trailer for yet another ping pong movie, and then one for soccer, and I started thinking, I have seen movies based on lots of sports: all the aforementioned, golf, football, basketball, a few others, but never one for rugby. Oddly, the very next trailer I clicked at random on Apple’s Trailer site was for Forever Strong, staring Sean Faris, Gary Cole and Sean Astin. (Despite the All Black Haka style intro we see at the start of the trailer, shown below, the movie takes place in the USA.)

Watch the better quality trailer at the official site linked above.

A moment of humor for everyone:

Hmm…. It looks like all my posts lost their Categories and Tags. Hopefully this is just a temporary hiccup on the database.
Tags are back, and older posts have their Categories back, but my list for categories for new posts is gone now. Even going to Manage > Categories shows a blank list. I think my table got corrupted when the database went down earlier…
EDIT: Fixed it with a database repair.

We likely will loose our Internet connection for a while until we can get caught up on all our other bills. So I probably won’t be able to make any posts for a while or approve comments (or watch for ones that got marked as Spam on accident). I should still be able to check my email once in a while at work.

Bob Barr is the Libertarian Party candidate for President. I normally support the Libertarian Party candidate, but this time I am not so sure I can. I am fine with him changing his mind on the War on Drugs, same sex marriage, his original support of the Patriot Act and his original support for the War in Iraq… all these things he has publicly came out against his original position and now is firmly on the correct side of those debates.
However, I have yet to hear him apologize for his bill that would force the Pentagon to ban the practice of Wicca. A move that awarded him one of the few Burning Times awards ever given out. Regardless of one’s view of Wicca, the First Amendment clearly states (emphasis mine): “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..”
Too many on the Right seem to want to return to the way it was in Europe (and the Colonies here) when people were burned at the stake for believing something different than those in charge did. Joan of Arc, a Christian was burned at the stake by the very same church that later made her a Saint for failing to believe the way they did. Of course rather than burn people at the stake, they want to return to the burning times via political and legal action. This is wrong, and Christ Himself would oppose it. What too many people on the Right seem to forget is that Jesus didn’t hang out among the righteous of His day, but among the very people the Right want to ban and alienate. They say “What Would Jesus Do?” with one side of their mouth, but the other side of their mouth and their actions (which speak louder than words) show they don’t care about what Jesus would actually do, they just want to force their beliefs and agenda on everyone.
To make a bill that would ignore the Constitution and the important concept of freedom of region is just asinine… it is the ignoring of the First Amendment (among so many other things) that firmly put me in the opposition to Bush/McCain. If Bob Barr was to publicly do a sincere apology, and be accepted by, say the Lady Liberty League (who for the rights of Wiccan/Pagan soldiers… and Wicca/Pagan rights in general) and some others, then perhaps I can get behind him. But I can’t support a guy who opposes the First Amendment.

Most of the family already knows, as does most of our friends. For the rest of our family and friends who may not have heard the news, Sara is pregnant. We have a medical confirmation, and she’ll be going for her first pre-natal visit soon. The current expected date is in April.

I am back on the wanting to move to New Zealand bandwagon again.
As much as I like the idea of moving to Nelson, New Zealand, I think we would likely do Wellington. Sara was hot for the idea for a short while, but has cooled off again… It is far from everyone we know, but it is on the 5 year plan.

I use Akismet to block comment spam. For one of the very few times in the last few years of using it, I looked through the comments it caught and I found 3 comments out of 60 or so that weren’t spam.
After a bit of searching on Akismet false positives I am now convinced that a ton of messages may have been marked as spam that were in fact not. My deepest appologies and while I can not recover those lost messages, I will try to change to Spam Karma or something like that.
(Also, if we loose our Internet connection again soon, which is likely, it may be a while before the comments are approved, I’ll try to post that when the site goes down…)
EDIT 1: Now using Spam Karma to do help with the moderating… only a couple hours and already 50 some spams… would hate to see what a blog with higher popularity would have to put up with.
EDIT 2: I am now considering switching from WordPres to Drupal… but will probably wait until Drupal 7 is out before making that choice… and it has little to do with the Spam since that would be an equal problem with both platforms.
EDIT 3: With all the real comments I have had since I turned off Akistmit, I am now sure it was giving TONS of false positives.

I saw a report that illegal Mexican immigrants are returning to Mexico in record numbers (story). A part of it is the fear over the tougher stance of illegal immigration, but the biggest part is America’s softening economy. Of course apparently lots of Mexican’s resent them returning since they are afraid that it will drive wages down and burden the social services. I can see the Neo-Cons now… “It’s not a failed Economic Policy, it is sound immigration policy.”

McCain, and tons of others, talk about how America was founded on Judea-Christian traditions. however, even Thomas Jefferson (yes, THE Thomas Jefferson, renowned Founding Father, favored among Liberals, Neo-Cons, Evangelicals and more) noted: “The proof of the contrary, which you have adduced, is incontrovertible; to wit, that the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet Pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character had ever existed.” Thomas Jefferson’s original design for the Great Seal was to include the images of Hengist and Horsa (leaders of the Anglo-Saxons, two thousand years before Christianity reached their shores) on one side (to be fair the reverse side on Jefferson’s seal would have had Moses leading people to the promised land.). So, if we are speaking about our system of laws and values, we are in fact founded on Pagan traditions…
Perhaps McCain wasn’t talking about our Nation’s actual founding, but going back further… Native Americans… not Christian before Westerner’s forced them to convert, so he wasn’t talking about them. Vikings were here next… again not Christian. The Pilgrims were Christian. Perhaps he was talking about them… but they were escaping a Christian country (much like the Evangelicals would like to setup), so perhaps not the best example. So what the hell was he talking about?

Some polls suggest up to 73% of American’s support offshore drilling to help decrease our dependence on foreign oil.There are just so many problems it hard to know where to start… so I’ll just make a little list in no particular order.
Before I go on, I should point out that I don’t necessarily oppose offshore drilling, but I think the reasoning is misdirected and relies on American’s ignorance of markets and other issues.

McCain said in a new media briefing where he was talking about the Russian invasion of Georgia, that “in the 21st Century, Nations don’t invade other Nations.” Now… um… I don’t know what planet he lives on, but somebody on his staff needs to inform him that the US invaded Iraq, and perhaps remind him that he is ready and willing to stay there 100 more years if need be. Of course I am sure he would say we were justified in our actions, while Russia was not.

As I reported before, I am trying out a Hackintosh (running OS X on my non-Mac machine). A few initial thoughts from a long time Windows user.
First, let’s back up. My initial experience with computers was a Vic 20, followed by Apple IIs, all in school, and I longed for an Amiga when they were out. (I would eventual fall for the NeXT as well, but that platform never took off…save to start the World Wide Web… still would love to have a good NeXT Cube or Color…. all beyond the point.) I remember the Lisa and respecting the innovation there, and I remember the first Mac (and its awesome 1984 ad) and thought they had a thing over PCs, of course by the time the Mac rolled around PCs were finally starting to break through to the common people. Anyhow, for a long time I used DOS, and I was okay with the switch to Windows 3.1, though some tasks I still found easier to go to the command line for (just try to get me to do too much command line stuff these days… I recall little beyond dir and dir /w). I had a harder time moving to Windows 95 from 3.1, though I eventually got used to it so much that I had problems remembering how to do stuff in 3.1 when I was installing Road Runner. Now of course I have Windows XP, and I keep marching on…
On to OS X. So I install OS X onto my PC (an AMD based machine at that, which throws in an extra challenge…) and the first attempt doesn’t work (didn’t read the options, missed things like AMD, etc…), second attempt works very well save the fact I can’t connect to the Internet. I eventually fixed the Internet (detailed a bit in my previously linked post) and eventually kill the system when I try to upgrade to 10.5.4 (from 10.5.2). I try a third time, better success on the install (turns out the drivers I needed for the Internet access were an option had I looked at all of them) but again kill the system with the upgrade… lesson, leave it at 10.5.2. Fourth install is what I am on now, everything is running fine and I can now finally get to see what it is like.
First thing that disoriented me was the way the applications menu bar goes to the top of the screen and doesn’t seem connected to the application itself. To access the default menu, you have to resize or minimize the application, then click an empty spot on the desktop (probably don’t have to do it that way, I am sure there is an easier way to bring up the regular menu).
Then I noticed closing an application (via clicking the X on the upper left of the application’s window) doesn’t seem to make it quit. It is still on the bar, with the little light below it showing that it is still going. Right click that and you can choose quit, or just make it big again and choose quit from the menu. Either way, this seems a little odd. I can get used to the menu bar being in the same spot, but this seems unintuitive, at least from a Windows user POV.
Then today I installed XCode. When it was finished, I didn’t see the icon to start it anywhere. I eventually found it in the folder it was installed in, but there was no shortcut to it in the Applications or Utilities folders, I didn’t see a new folder for anything show up. If all applications/games do the same thing, then this would make Mac harder for the average person to use. I know enough to look in the folder it was installed to, but a casual user may just want to click the Windows Start button, click over to the application/game they want and go from there. Perhaps there is an option for this kind of thing, and perhaps most applications/games that aren’t geared to developers may install shortcuts (I think they are called an allies in OS X) in an easy to find location.
Those 3 issues aside, the only thing standing between Apple and bigger market share (I know, Steve Jobs said “Apple’s market share is bigger than BMW’s or Mercedes’s or Porsche’s in the automotive market. What’s wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?” but still, they have to think about a better market share I would think) is price. Those 3 things you can easily retrain people on, just put a “Learning to use Mac OS X for Windows users” video on the desktop or something, but price is a harder thing to get past. Perhaps they seriously do see themselves as the BMW of the computer world. This would explain why an honest to God Mac costs nearly twice as much as similarly equipped PC. Some people like BMWs. Me? I say if I had the money for a BMW, I would rather get a basic Toyota Camery and spend the rest of my funds on something else. Both cars get me from Point A to Point B. The BMW may do it with more style (who really wants a hot leather seat in Summer and cold leather seat in Winter anyhow? I seriously don’t get why cloth isn’t an option in high end cars since I don’t want to burn myself or freeze myself until the seat warmer kicks in, and what if I just don’t want to kill an animal just to have a seat that might feel slightly nicer in good weather days) and ride refinements, but short of nearly living in the car driving all the time, who cares? Of course it is the, short of nearly living in it all the time, that is the catch in the Mac’s case. If you spend all your time on that PC, then it probably should be as refined and stylish as it can be. Still, the people who on the pocketbook of most companies don’t care about such things, they see that PC from Dell costs less than half as much and the employee can do just as much on it, so it wins. I am not saying that Macs need to approach Dell’s price points, even Dell’s high end XPS price points are probably lower than what I would aim Mac at, but I would come in close so that more people may look at it more closely.
I also think I agree with John Carmack, and that Apple just doesn’t get games. This may be largely Steve Jobs’ fault, I don’t know. But I think they underestimate how important gaming is to the home market, at the very least casual gaming (since serious gaming seems to be moving to consoles, not so much by choice of the hardcore gamers, but by publishers).
Anyhow, those are my initial thoughts… it’s 1:30 and I must get to bed… I’ll tag this post and the other Hackontosh post up later…

I am trying to get OSX (the Macintosh operating system) running on my PC. This made more difficult by a few facts. First having a nVidia chipset rather than an Intel chipset. The bigger issue is that I have an AMD processor rather than an Intel processor. While AMD is Intel compatible, it makes for certain issues trying to run OSX.
I did get the DVD to load to the Install screen, but it isn’t detecting the hard drive (I disconnect my Windows hard drive and am trying to use an older HD, which in theory should work… though that drive is doesn’t seem to function all the time anyhow which is one of the reasons Windows doesn’t know it’s there…) The problem seems to be the placement of the jumper. If I put the jumper on Cable Select, the computer itself finds the hard drive as the IDE Master, but if I put the jumper on Master, the computer doesn’t see the HD at all. Very odd. Unfortunately the jumper itself has to be on Master, not Cable Select for the Hackintosh to recognize it is there and proceed with the install. I think once I get past that point the only issues to work out will be audio (most Hackintosh systems seem to have audio issues) and LAN (another thing that commonly fail in a Hackintosh).
All this will be good and well until that dream day when I could have a Mac Pro… and a native Windows PC since I still like gaming… then again if I move all my gaming to an XBox 360 (cough… hint…) then I could use BootStrap to run the few Windows games that would be left that I would want to play still… generally casual games since the big titles come out for the Mac… if not as good looking on the Mac…
Of course to go with a Mac Pro (not the Mac Book Pro since there are issues with the nVidia mobile graphics chips… an issue nVidia refuses to admit to, but seems every c0mputer vendor has narrowed the problem to nVidia’s graphic chips).

EDIT: Success on the second attempt (would have had it on the first had I bothered to look at the customize install options). Sound is working out of the box, but I don’t have LAN (therefore no Internet yet). I’ll have to find where XCode is at on the disk so I can install that as well (didn’t see that in the options off hand). So I am basically able to run 10.5.2. Now if the Kalyway team will just make a 10.5.3 I would be a little more set. Anyhow, Internet may be gone soon, so I may not be able to give any updates for a while…
EDIT 2: I got the Internet working on it using the forcedeth.kext. I updated everything using Zephyroth’s ASU, except OS X itself. When I tried that one, the system locks up during boot with a “Mac Framework successfully initialized using 5242 bugger headers and 4096 cluster IO buffer headers.” Which probably means re-installing from scratch…