Posted 5:31 PM by Robert Ronald Smith

#&%@* computers!

I've been working with computers since 1962 (you've probably heard of that year). JFK was President, but soon to be gone. I can't remember when I got sick of computers, but it was long ago, and I do think about doing without them. When I made my living with computers, I always used the newest, latest-model beasty, but now that I earn very little or no money using one, it's just an expense, and it's very hard to justify upgrading. With an older computer, like an older car, there are an increasing number of problems, and I've had a ton of them over the past couple of months.

Thursday night I had a problem that would be funny if it hadn't cost me so much time. Cats like to wander into small spaces. Truth is, they can hardly resist such spaces. Squirt, my 11-year-old calico, stepped on the off/on switch of a power module, turning off the power to my PC. Amazingly, I had saved my work, but when I turned the power back on, I could no longer get online. After recycling the modem and rebooting the PC, each several times, to no avail, I phoned the cable company. It might surprise you to learn that Time Warner/Roadrunner has pretty competent tech service, but my time with them was not successful this time. It seemed that I needed to reload the driver for the NIC card, but I didn't have the software for this secondhand PC.

Giving up for the night, I drove about 10 minutes to use another PC, to post my No Force article at midnight, and to retrieve my email from the web. Next morning, I got a free CD of drivers from the local Time Warner store, and worked for hours, using every driver on the CD. I gave up, ate lunch, and then took a nap.

After the nap, I decided that it must be the NIC card itself that was damaged. A trip to OfficeMax resulted in a new card for $5 after rebate. I installed the software with it, put the card in, cranked it back up... and it worked!

Total cost of a careless cat: $5, 30 minutes of driving, and about 8 hours of effort.

Posted 8:25 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

Well, it's about time!

I've been very neglectful of this blog. Is there anyone still out there reading? Couldn't blame you if you weren't. I did update the SMITH.MN site this morning.

Did everyone here in the Twin Cities notice that the temperature dropped 43 degrees in less than 12 hours? It got up to 90 yesterday and then cooled off wonderfully overnight. I like it cool. As I've long pointed out... you can always add more clothing, but there's a limit to how much you can take off.

The damned war isn't getting ANY better, in any way that I can see. 2/3 of Iraqis want the U.S. outa there, and I'm with them. I don't give a damn what excuse or propaganda we have to spread to make it seem like something other than a defeat, we should just back away. It would be good for us, and good for them.

will today surpass a total of 68,000 readers. It's truly amazing how people find it from all over the country. 30 or 40 people/day reach it through a web search of some kind. I got emails this week from 2 Floridian readers, both libertarians, both of Cuban descent.

Let me make an appeal to you... I would love to write more positive stories... about ways in which freedom is working, or individual effort is succeeding in ways that government doesn't. Unfortunately, virtually all the news is depressing. If you run across an encouraging, uplifting, or hopeful story, clue me in to it. We could all use a little hope. Just give me a note at bob@smith.mn

Posted 3:55 PM by Robert Ronald Smith

SMITH.MN updates

I added EIGHT more Bob Smiths to Page 3 of "A World of Bob Smiths", and updated the body count for American and Coalition forces... 5 more Americans in the past 2 days.

Posted 9:28 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

and the Beating goes on...

How bad does it have to get before the last of the pro-war public admits it? I suspect there are a few we can ignore, who wouldn't admit to a change of attitude until the last human in Iraq was killed, but clearly, some people are admitting that their support of the war was wrong. I don't want to rub salt in their wounds, and I would gladly refrain from saying "Told you so" if they would learn a lesson from the experience... something that might keep them from making the same mistake again.

The lessons they might learn are several:

1. You can't force people to be free. They have to want it enough to fight for it themselves. If they don't appreciate freedom from government tyranny that much, they won't keep it even if they have it.

2. You can't, with any hope of success, hope to force a people into changing their basic beliefs. You can't ram democracy down people's throats.

3. You cannot trust what your government tells you. There simply should be no doubt in anyones mind that political leaders have no hesitation in deceiving the public, especially in trying to cover up something dumb they've done. There is too much at stake for them to risk being truthful... and they don't think we're smart enough to handle the truth. They believe they simply know better, despite all evidence to the contrary.

4. You cannot expect your support for a government action to produce only the results you wanted it to have. EVERY... I say again... EVERY government action produces results that you didn't intend. If you look back at a government action you once supported, you are bound to find that, even if, by some rare miracle, it did what you wanted done, that it produced other results that you HATE. Almost without exception, the bad results will outweigh any positive results. If you wanted the U.S. to ONLY remove Saddam Hussein from power, and then return home, you had a completely unrealistic expectation. The result we're seeing in Iraq was as inevitable as night following day. It could have turned out no other way.

As an ugly side-note not to be overlooked: Yesterday, 5 American Marines were killed, and all 5 were but 18 years of age. EIGHTEEN! Do we value human life so little that we are willing to sacrifice, on the altar of stupid, unneccessary war, those young people we usually claim as "our hope for the future"?