The Wrong Right

Posted on December 13, 2015 by ehurst

The backlash from the Right is upon us.

Keep in mind that I do not support any part of the system, so don’t get any silly ideas that I might actually favor any of the figures involved in the current political scene. I might admire certain traits and their political skills from a distance, but I want no part of their world.

So perhaps you are aware that Donald Trump as presidential candidate is leading in the Republican polls. He is very much the Alpha Male in this race in terms of voter popularity. You may recall I jokingly suggested that he needs to hire some thugs to kill or put the screws to a large number of Republican party apparatchiks. I was only half-joking in the sense that I don’t actually advocate such violence, but I honestly believe he can’t win any other way. Apparently the apparatchiks have begun planning their own game. Were you aware that there was some violence against Ron Paul’s delegates back when he ran for president? And he didn’t have a chance, so there was really no need beyond sheer intimidation. With Trump’s very real lead in the polls, you can be sure the party leadership will use violence against his organization. We might not hear much about it, but I’m willing to bet it happens. The Neocons will never permit the least measure of fairness. Their bitterness is bottomless.

Meanwhile, the one candidate most likely now to actually win this threatened floor fight is Marco Rubio. Take note of the promises he makes, because you can be sure he will honestly try to keep them. The few decent things Obama has done will be rolled back, and all the worst he has done will be pushed to extremes. But I’m willing to bet the Republican Party will nominate Rubio regardless of whom the voters support. Gone are the days of keeping up appearances of democracy; naked power plays are the new normal.

Of course, I’m not ruling out any surprises. Violence against the candidates themselves would not be entirely new. That may return. And there’s always room for some other kinds of big surprises. It’s not just some slender differences in policy outcomes between Trump and Rubio; they aren’t that different. It’s that Trump is his own man, and we haven’t had anything but empty suits for the longest time in the Oval Office. The system will not permit real leadership from the office itself.

And a part of me wonders just how violent things may be. This is the part where I hope I’m mistaken, but the violence has just begun. So far our government has lied about every single episode of senseless brutality that made the news, and routinely lies in court about the stuff that doesn’t make the news. You don’t have to believe it’s all false flags, but all the way back to at least JFK’s assassination, the reflexive deception has been a major factor in every incident beyond routine petty crime. So all the supposed changes meant to protect us are no such thing; they are to protect elite privilege and nothing more.

The boiling cauldron of right-wing violence is about to spill over. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

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Crushed by Glory

Posted on December 13, 2015 by ehurst

Over the years since my formal conscious departure from social convention, I’ve often found myself still dragging the weight of false conditioning. My mental reflexes are still wrong in so many ways. That in itself was a source of great sorrow until I was seized by the realization that holiness is in the sensitivity, not the success. Righteousness is the willingness to learn in the heart and teach the mind. This is part of why I insist that you not take my word on things, because while I’m utterly convinced God will not permit my silence, I’m also quite certain I’ll say some things that you need to ignore.

That is, don’t pay so much attention to the ostensible meaning of what I write here, but see through the exercise of writing and reading to discern the thread of heart-led operation. Some of those heart-led revelations from God can shock my mental reflexes, and create a sense of emergency where there is none. The change in my own realizations filled me with and urgency that was wholly internal. I deeply regret all the times that flaw led me to write things in a tone that implied you folks needed to take some hasty action. Again, please see through my words and follow your own heart, because I’m not sure there is any way I can change the way I express things here.

I’m quite sure I’m not alone. The vast weight of God’s glory and holiness disorients human flesh. We see quite often in Scripture where some messenger of God was so deeply enthralled by the unearthly sensory data that it overwhelmed their heart’s leash on the mind. This is why at the transfiguration of Jesus (Matt. 17, Mark 9 & Luke 9:28ff) that we see the apostle blabbering silly things about shrines. I know exactly how he felt in that moment.

I’ve been blabbering for years about a time of tribulation coming. That part I got right, because it’s here. The impact on my soul at every fresh reminder often led me to jump the gun on what I should do about it, and it showed up in what I wrote at the time. This is where I remind you: Don’t follow me. I’m lost, too. I was often ready to erect a shrine, but that’s because I really hadn’t seen much, only the beginning of things. It was all fresh and new to me, and I hope I never lose that sense of wonder.

This is exactly the opposite of what The Cult is doing to the rest of the world that knows little or nothing of heart-led existence. They keep piling on new shocks, but not of the holy kind. Rather, they are shocks calculated entirely on the basis of human senses and logic. They throw outrages at us, knowing that the majority of humanity will get all riled up until, at some point, the excitement wears off. And then the shocking evil becomes routine. Meanwhile, The Cult has been threading into our cultural expectations a whole new set of false expectations so they can shock us again later on. The Cult could care less about the moral content of all this; the cycle of shock and jading is the whole point. It serves to trivialize the divine revelation of God’s moral character.

Now we come to the point where you have to work out your own implications. There will be tribulation: war, disease, deprivation, and unimaginable bloodshed. In some ways it’s nothing new to human memory, but some of it will be quite new to our senses individually. Even the wisest will be momentarily surprised by what they see, if only because none of us is allowed to keep track of what’s really going on. It’s not that truth can actually be hidden, but that the price of access becomes rather high. Access to the real truth in one particular area of human activity will consume too much of you to enable a wider awareness, so there will always be surprises for each of us.

Oddly enough, this is how God works with us. Since none of us can see what He sees, He parcels His truth out into manageable chunks for each of us. You have your calling and I have mine. To the degree we overlap, we can fellowship with, or at least entertain, each other. Feel free to laugh at me, because I sometimes do that when I look in the mirror, so you would only be laughing with me. Take seriously the business of revealing God in your life.

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Psalm 79

Posted on December 12, 2015 by ehurst

Like Psalm 74, this is a threnody for Israel the Mission. Something brought the wrath of God on His people, His city, and His Temple. Asaph’s cry is not for mere vengeance, but for God’s glory and a restoration of the mission to reflect that glory in His blessings.

It would be a mistake to read back into this passage the racism common in Jesus’ day. Asaph clearly understands that being God’s Chosen is a high privilege, not some divine right. The problem here is that the nations who don’t know God and don’t take His name or reputation seriously have defiled His holy place. Worse, they have ravaged the structures and plundered some of the dedicated articles. If the knew God and were mindful of His holiness, this would be totally different. Still worse, these invaders have defiled the Temple grounds with unjust blood, and treated victim’s bodies with contempt. Finally, all those nearby who long have hated Jehovah and His mission of revelation are now emboldened to blasphemy.

More than merely a common question, it is proper protocol to ask in this fashion, “How long, O Lord?” Hebrew culture viewed time differently, and things of this nature were seldom measured in standard increments. Rather, the question calls for a sign, something to indicate when this thing has ripened and is ready for harvest. The question is a figure of speech aimed more at, “What fruit do You seek? Is this the end for us?” The wrath of God is meant for those who don’t know Him and His ways, and obviously Israel has slipped into that territory. When the Psalmist sees that wrath falling outside of Israel over the defiling His name, he will know that God has heard his cry.

Only a fool denies that Israel has sinned, surely in the past if not in the present. She has never been worthy of divine favor. The issue hangs on God’s mercy, not human worthiness. Thus, rescue is all a matter of His glory, not anything due the people. Has God invested so much of His reputation in Israel to let her die to the sound of blasphemy? At least show Your hand of power on the enemies of Israel, as well, O Lord. And if we can find favor in Your sight, rescue us through their demise.

Rightly has Israel been taken into punitive custody. And rightly does she bemoan her fate. So let the crying touch Your heart, Lord. May the curses heaped on us by our envious neighbors be paid back upon them “in sevens” (a figure of speech for something sacred). The final scenario is that the redeemed will celebrate the greatness of their God.

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Tinkering with Glory

Posted on December 11, 2015 by ehurst

All things for the glory of His name.

Would you believe some of the Win7 drivers on this laptop broke Windows Update? I tried two different ways of installing Win7 on the Studio 1535 and things were just dandy until I finally got around to installing some of the less essential drivers. One of them stopped Update from working at all. I couldn’t even use one of the alternative off-line update methods. The whole thing would hang and no further security updates were possible.

I get the feeling Dell decided this particular line of laptops just didn’t warrant the careful support they normally give other stuff. At any rate, I wasn’t giving up on it.

So I tested OpenSUSE again, just for fun. The current stable version is 42.1 “Leap” and it was really nice on the hardware and gave me a usable XFCE desktop. However, the support for things like the exfat file system you find on most SD cards is dicey at best. Several individuals offer a package for it, but not all of them actually do anything useful. Worse, their whole ecosystem of friendly third-party packages like that is chaotic at best. You end up adding all kinds of extra repos you may not really want, but you have no idea because the system gives you really crappy advice about it.

So somewhere around midnight last night I drug out the CentOS DVD and decided that I had learned enough in my bruising experience to try it again. If all I lose is the wifi, I’ll be okay. So I put that back on and that’s where I’m working right now. I did have to twiddle with the keyboard settings, but it seems to be working fine without the spurious keystroke events.

I’m hoping I’m finished with all this testing and can actually use this machine to write for awhile. Nothing is perfect. God has made it clear I need to understand how to tame CentOS for the desktop. Though it is not my personal preference, it’s not intolerable for me.

Here’s an interesting take-away for you: If you don’t understand computer security, it won’t matter what OS you run; you’ll still have trouble. If you have the time and inclination to tinker with such things and can learn from it, you can probably make anything pretty safe. But however much your computer matters to you, it’s really important that you put forth a matching effort to make it work properly. It most certainly is far more work than it should be. The kind of personality and collection of talents it takes to be good at writing software tend to make folks spiteful toward more ordinary users. There are some folks talented at bridging the gap between developers and users, but there’s no money in it — not in our culture. I should know, because that’s me.

I’ll do what I can to bring the resources together for you, the ordinary user, regardless of what OS you use. That’s part of how I bring Him glory.

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Clues to Our Path

Posted on December 10, 2015 by ehurst

Truth is not a goal, but a path.

We could wish that the whole world were heart-led. Instead, we are blessed indeed just to find one other in our geographic vicinity. For a precious few, this is a natural transition. As soon as you describe it, they recognize it in themselves and run down the path shouting for joy. For most, we have to give them time to adapt.

I leave for others the same clues that brought me here. First, I talk about convictions. In terms of psychology, we might talk about conscience, but that’s just the initial awareness of conviction. Conscience can be adjusted, but convictions are eternal. The mind cannot comprehend conviction, but it does have some hope of discovering what the convictions require in various contexts. Most people do seem to grasp that concept once you discuss it.

The second primary clue is empathy. People generally understand that empathy tends to act like a talent, in the sense that people are born with a native capacity, a variable range that depends on your environment and conscious efforts to develop it. The term introduces the image of discerning others through something other than your five senses and plain logic.

The words alone don’t heal a weak understanding. As with all language, the terms can be used as part of a broader effort to deceive. We can’t simply fix a problem with the right magic words. We have to remember that it really isn’t about us, but God’s divine Presence shining through us with varying degrees of clarity. All we can do with verbal expression is indicate something no words can say. As with everything else, context is what matters most.

So it’s proper for us to suggest we want to win folks over to a heart-led existence, but we dare not assume it’s actually we who do anything of the sort. It’s all we can do simply living that existence ourselves and let God speak through it.

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Debian 8 on Dell Studio 1535 (Updated)

Posted on December 9, 2015 by ehurst

Busted! See the update at the bottom.

This was a used laptop found cheaply on eBay. Some of the specs:

  • 2.1 Ghz dual-core Intel CPU
  • 4GB RAM
  • 250GB drive and slot-style DVD-RW
  • Radeon HD 3450 video
  • Matching AMD 3400 series audio
  • Broadcom BCM5784M Gigabit Ethernet (“tigon”)
  • Broadcom BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/ wifi (not fully supported, but functional with b43 firmware)
  • Bluetooth, Ricoh SD card reader, Firewire, fingeprint scanner, etc.

What Didn’t Work

Dell still offers all the working drivers for Vista 32-bit and 64-bit, but the fingerprint scanner software (“DigitalPersona”) is no longer offered so far as I can tell. I found an installer from HP (use your favorite search engine) for the same OS works just fine, giving me all the goodies with a finger-swipe login for the machine and just about anything else. But it’s Vista, with all the drive thrashing, dog slow, obtrusive unknown background processes, multi-day updates and day-long defragging, etc. At least it doesn’t get the forced Win10 upgrade crap.

I won’t take the time and space to explain why I didn’t test your preferred Linux distro. I use what I use, same as everyone else.

CentOS 7 installs and works, but you’ll never get the wifi to work. The source code from Broadcom for the STA driver will not compile and no one offers current patches because the good folks associated with the Red Hat/Fedora community just can’t be bothered to help with that.

Xubuntu, as a branch of Ubuntu, has begun following a bad pattern. While you can get the previous LTS to install, quite a few big items (like WINE) aren’t updated to match without the risk of adding yet another PPA where you can never be sure the lead developer will keep it current with your particular flavor. So you can install the most recent release (15.10 as of this writing) but it’s buggy. If you want to submit a bug report, you had better be a coder because the folks running the bug reporting system are unlikely to bother with helping you triage this stuff; you are supposed to know how to do all that for them when you submit the bug. At any rate, the current release of *buntu has a buggy keyboard driver, as reported in several places, with random events generated spontaneously and keypress events sticking, etc. but everyone denies it’s a bug.

KDE is no longer worth my time, either. I used to recommend it to newbies, but not any more. Unless you are running a high-end nVidia card with proprietary drivers, you will run into all sorts of display issues. I’ve had repaints fail on Intel and Radeon chipsets, along with ghost artifacts and sometimes an app simply refuses to close and buggers up the display until you have to reset the X server.

Oh, and GNOME 3 is of interest only to sysadmins and serious geeks. Cinnamon is just a slightly tamer face on the same anti-user design of GNOME. MATE is not yet ready for prime time, with too many configuration options missing. It is not yet where GNOME 2 was when it ended.

What Does Work Well Enough

Debian 32-bit with XFCE: You will need a good .fonts.conf no matter what you use, but Debian can be partially tamed without it (see my previous post on this for a sample that works for most current distros). Otherwise, it’s just a matter of learning how to find your way around XFCE. I suppose LXDE is okay if that’s your cup of tea.

It won’t talk directly to my Nikon Coolpix S2600, and the card-reader works only with root permissions. Linux never found the integrated webcam, but I had no plans to use it in the first place. And I’ve yet to see any implementation of the Alps Glidepoint that didn’t suffer hesitations, where it periodically stops responding for a second or two. It’s rare that I’m happy with a touchpad in the first place.

Immediately after installing you’ll get an ugly display because it requires the Radeon firmware included in the package “firmware-linux-nonfree.” The get the wifi, you’ll need both “firmware-b43-installer” and “b43-fwcutter” — upon installation a script will download the proper files, slice and dice and put them where the kernel can load them. Linux also cannot find the WAPS, cellphone chips, and other stuff I have no intention of using. Whenever you add firmware like that, you usually have to reboot for it to work.

I suggest that in the BIOS settings you allow the radio switch to control everything (left side of the laptop chassis near the hinge). To the degree you use any of the various items attached, it needs to stay turned on, and each item controlled individually from the desktop. There is a catch for the Bluetooth, because it isn’t recognized out of the box. You’ll need to make sure you’ve installed the “blueman” package, then follow the instructions here. Make sure the numbers match when you run lsusb; you are looking for the number that follows the ID column. At any rate, on this laptop I issued this command as root:

echo 0x0a5c 0x4500 > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/btusb/new_id

Suddenly the Bluetooth indicator appeared in the notification widget on the Panel. Bluetooth is one of the easiest ways to copy files between devices. The Bluetooth Manager will allow you to discover other devices and setup a file transfer.

This is not a great laptop for Linux, but for less than $100 (US) it’s quite usable.

Update: Argh! That sticky keyboard thing affects Debian, as well. It was not present under any version of Windows nor under CentOS, so I doubt if it’s a hardware issue. Either it’s how Debian and friends configure their kernels or it’s something in those more recent than what CentOS uses. At any rate, a writer can’t have sticky keys, so I’ve installed Win7.

While there is a very good guide for this project here, chances are you won’t need all of the downloads. From a clean install, Win7 discovers most of the hardware without issue. You’ll need to get the drivers for the Ricoh card readers and the Authentec fingerprint reader. You might need a few others items depending on your hardware configuration, but I’m pretty sure the only way you’ll get the fingerprint reader software package (“DigitalPersona”) is, as previously noted in the Vista experience, from HP. Everything else seems to be just fine except for the Win10 upgrade crap. This is still the best guide on what to block from Windows Update.

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Tinker or Not

Posted on December 9, 2015 by ehurst

In biblical thinking, context is everything.

One of the few certitudes in our existence here is change. The context will morph. The changes may come in batches and you’ll notice trends. At other times, though, the changes are incremental and we don’t really notice until the sum total of small changes become one big change. Perception is a critical element. Our challenge is to recognize when trends and shifts are for us alone and when they matter to others. And then we have to decide how they matter.

It’s probably of no significance to you, for example, that after testing various configurations, I’m most comfortable doing my computer stuff with a laptop on a lapboard in an office chair that leans back on a swivel mounted under the seat. In other words, not those chairs in which only the back moves, but the whole thing has to tip or I can’t use it. And it needs armrests at just the right height, and a bit of lumbar curve so that my booty sits back into the pocket.Mouseblock

I’ve also decided that, for the most part, the technology for touchpads never lived up to the hype. My netbook is the first and only good touchpad I’ve ever used. All the rest have suffered from quirks that frustrate me to the point that they interfere with the flow of things. So my lapboard has to have a mouse pad of sorts. Would you believe I’ve spent some hours discovering the right size and placement of a small flat surface attached to the lapboard, so that I can use it all instinctively? And then there was the question of how best to construct the thing with elegant simplicity.

The image shows that I cut a block of soft pine lumber and covered it with stiff brown paper because any optical mouse tracks well on that. The mouse in question is a Logitech G100S gaming mouse I found on the discount shelf; it is internally accelerated so that only small movements are necessary. I’ve found that wired is far more responsive than any wireless pointer. The block has on the bottom a thick piece of corrugated cardboard folded to fit over the end of the leg plank on my home-made lapboard. It doesn’t block the optical drive slot and the power cord doesn’t interfere, yet the placement is comfortable for me in the armchair.

Our Western culture bears a false dichotomy of luxurious perfection versus Spartan tolerance when it comes to such things. In a biblical heart-led existence, we know that a certain amount of tension between what’s possible and what’s ideal is the norm. Mass marketing attempts to commoditize our tastes for the sake of the merchant’s convenience and profit, but you and I know better than to tolerate something that hinders our service to God. Whether we tinker with things is a matter of personality and taste; whether we succeed is a matter of savvy and experience. Whether we ever stop tinkering is yet another story.

In my case, some of the tinkering is for the sheer joy of exploration. That’s a part of what makes a hacker in the computer world, a part of the gamer’s ethos. When you play computer or video games, a fundamental element is poking around and trying out various tricks to see how it happens. If something goes wrong, you restart the game session. With computer technology, that’s a critical safety net enabling the freedom to explore. You can’t do that with near as much freedom in meat space. Some explorations carry a far higher risk. Not that it stops everyone; that is also a matter of personality and character. It’s utterly wrong to question the sanity of someone with a different scale or risk assessment; there is nothing objective at all about it. There is no moral standard that applies there. Even in pure business calculus, each actor has to decide whether the gain is worth it. It is entirely valid to consider “gain” in your own way. The only real bottom line is what your conscience tells you is in your convictions.

Side note: Avoid when possible agreeing to hold yourself accountable to folks whose values are significantly different from your moral convictions.

So no one should be surprised that, after a couple of days playing this used laptop, I’ve decided that my previous habits need not change by much. The blog post following this will be a techy description of what I found, but the intent here is more pastoral.

Be who you are.

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Proverbs 21 (Part 2)

Posted on December 8, 2015 by ehurst

17. He who loves pleasure shall be a poor man; he who loves wine and oil shall not be rich. It should be obvious from the context, but the Hebrew word translated “love” here typically refers to mere sexual desire, not an honest affection. Wine and oil become symbols for a luxurious and carefree life here.

18. The wicked shall be a ransom for the righteous, and the transgressor for the upright. This is obviously not meant literally. The Hebrew word translated here as “ransom” is a complex image based on the idea of protection against the random sorrows of this life. Sinners generally fail to grasp the moral fabric of reality in the first place, so might not notice how they tend to absorb a bigger share of human suffering in a way that protects those who do operate from the heart.

19. It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a quarrelsome and angry woman. Echoing verse 9 above, this emphasizes home life. Perhaps here we sense a note of wistfulness, the wise words of someone who has lived too long with a woman who did not admire the man she married, and lived from her nesting instinct instead of from her heart. Then again, Hebrew culture bears an affinity for the simple life, though often romanticized. They knew it was easier to be faithful to God when there were no expectations for soft living.

20. A desirable treasure and oil are in the home of the wise; but a foolish man swallows it up. The imagery translates poorly, because “treasure” covers the whole range of durable goods normally collected in a household, while “oil” represents consumables. It’s not that you are wise to collect these things, but that wise people tend to avoid wasteful living, while fools too quickly trade tomorrow for today’s pleasure. The modern images that come to mind are “consumer debt” and living beyond one’s means.

21. He who follows after righteousness and mercy finds life, righteousness, and honor. In the first phrase, Hebrew thinking equates righteousness and mercy. It’s neither having nor finding so much as embracing the fundamental nature of life itself. If you live a heart-led existence that keeps trying to see moral justice in everything, you’ll find it. Word order matter matters in the second phrase, because moral justice is always in the company of a vigorous “life” and genuine meaning (“honor” as in substantial).

22. A wise one scales the city of the mighty and brings down the strength of its hope. Another that suffers some in translation, this proverb paints the image of a fortified city run by a very able military tyrant. Genuine wisdom will always find the vulnerability in ordinary human security; wisdom is stronger than strength.

23. Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps his soul from troubles. This echoes of 13:3, but refers to much more than merely what you say. The wording here addresses what you eat and your whole sense of taste, as well. Don’t trust your flesh, which includes your intellect.

24. Proud, haughty scorner is his name, he who deals in proud wrath. Western culture has a perverted idea about niceness, and doesn’t understand the moral justice in being firm and fierce at times. This verse refers to insufferable arrogance that presumes a far larger dominion than God has delivered into one’s hands. Some people treat everyone else like trash and this is what’s wrong, particularly in an ancient culture that placed such a high value on not taking yourself too seriously. Who wants the reputation for being a complete ass?

25-26. The desire of the lazy man kills him, for his hands have refused to work. He covets greedily all the day long; but the righteous gives and spares not. These two verses are a single proverb offering a rich contrast. The fundamental nature of indolence is a sense of entitlement — having what you want shouldn’t be so much work. This is what’s deadly about laziness, and it’s an affliction on everyone around you. The lazy man obsesses about suffering this false sense of injustice, while the righteous man obsesses about making things just for others. The righteous don’t whine about what should be, but strives to make it so. Moral justice is its own reward.

27. The sacrifice of the wicked is hateful to God; how much more when he brings it with a wicked mind? It’s bad enough that some will engage covenant rituals simply to avoid social pressures. Empty gestures an insult to God. How much worse it is when they use symbols of moral justice as the cover for an evil plot.

28. A false witness shall perish, but the man who hears speaks on and on. This suffers in translation. If you tend to deceive, the ultimate exposure of your lies is morality itself; you’ll be a forgotten nobody. The image is a flood deceptive blather, a symbol of too busy lying to hear or give room for anyone else to get a word in edgewise. The contrast is someone who pays attention and doesn’t have to have everything his way. Their expression of truth will outlast their human existence.

29. A wicked man hardens his face, but the upright establishes his way. The subtle humor here is the contrast between struggling to keep up a hard shell versus investing carefully in a strong foundation. Immorality is built on deception, so it requires a lot of trouble keeping up a solid appearance. Moral justice doesn’t worry about the storms of life because what really matters can’t be washed away.

30. There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the LORD. The Hebrew word translated “against” here is much broader in its root meaning. It paints the image of coming into God’s Presence with opposition. It’s not a mere question of failure as in, “this isn’t too wise.” Rather, it simply doesn’t happen. If come into God’s Presence at all, it’s crawling on your face, humble and penitent. Thus, the proverb means you can’t argue with God’s revelation because that’s arguing against fundamental reality itself.

31. The horse is prepared for the day of battle; but safety is from the LORD. About the only use for a horse in the Ancient Near East was in battle or ceremonies that referenced martial power. It meant a very high investment in resources and time. If you anticipate human conflict, you wisely prepare for the worst. However, whether your resources are much or little, victory comes from the hand of God. If He means to bring you down, nothing you do will save you, but if He wants to defeat whole armies of enemies with just a choir, He can do it.

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Return to Draper Lake

Posted on December 7, 2015 by ehurst

Sooner bikepathAlmost mid-December and the temperature is unseasonably warm today at around 63°F (17C) so I couldn’t resist taking one of my long rides. Oddly, our new location makes it actually longer getting to Draper Lake. The approach used to be 7 miles (11.2 km) but now it’s 9 (14.4 km). And these days that one hilliest section of Draper Lake Drive is also badly chewed up and rough, so I skipped it today.

The first image above is the new bike path extension along Sooner Road. This portion runs from I-40 (Tinker Diagonal section) down to SE 29th. As you can see, it’s hardly finished as I’m standing on the dirt between the end of the path and the street. Far in the background you can just make out the interstate highway crossing over Sooner Road. This is looking north; Sooner Road is on the right and a huge open field is on the left. That has been a hay field since I can remember, way back in the 1970s when Sooner Road was just two lanes wide. Once I got across SE 29th, of course, I was on the one of the oldest sections of the county’s bike trails network where it parallels the west side of Tinker AFB. As with previous rides along here, it was just a straight shot down to SE 59th, east to Air Depot Boulevard and south to a much newer bike trail running along I-240 to Draper Lake Drive.

Draper ConstructionHeading counter-clockwise around the lake today, I stopped to check on the construction project down on the SW corner of the lake near the dam. I encountered only one other cyclist who overtook me on the dam. We chattered a bit, and then he pulled away on his fancy racing bike. I stayed on the main route heading north where it merges with Post Road, avoiding the trashed out section so I could go home a different way.

Sunflowers in winterDespite the warmth, you would expect everything to be dried and brown. So it was. Compare this shot (on the left) of the giant Black-eyed Susans along Post Road I took back in August. This is the same spot today. They’ll be back.

A little farther north, just passed SE 59th stands this ancient store-front building (below right). It was once a predecessor to today’s convenience stores. For some period of time between the construction of Draper Lake and sometime in the 1980s the store closed and now the whole thing sits abandoned. There are a couple of ancient mobile homes on the same property, off-camera to the left.Old storefront SE59thnPost The old porch was once all glassed in, but about half of the windows are broken out. The porch is crowded with broken down store fixtures: freezers, display cases, etc.

I stayed on Post Road all the way back up to Reno Avenue, then turned and headed back west toward home. At the Midwest City Library, I stopped to eat my packed lunch. Sitting on the curb across the parking lot farthest from the library, the central Midwest City fire station was at my back.AWACS landing Tinker They have a mock facility for smoke training, several stories tall. As I ate, one of Tinker’s AWACS craft came in for a landing. The image isn’t that good, in part because, at this point, the thing was crossing the field of view very quickly. I used to live in an apartment building just a hundred yards east of where I sat, and it’s just over a mile north off the end of the runway. With a busy flight path, you can imagine what it was like with frequent thundering and turbine screaming. The annual Tinker airshow was actually painful with the fighter jets practicing at low altitude.

It was just another 1.5 miles home to our current apartment, blissfully quiet by comparison.

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New Old Vista

Posted on December 6, 2015 by ehurst

Has anyone else noticed that, since Vista is only valid for another year or so, that Vista users aren’t hounded with the Win10 upgrade nonsense? Also, consensus of heavy-duty security folks is that Vista was the most secure and private version of Windows so far.

I suppose that’s in my favor, because Debian kept choking on hardware issues on my laptop.

Because my computer OS is not a part of my religion, it’s not as if I have face some kind of conversion experience to use Windows on any of my hardware. I still think Linux is better, but it’s not going to work on every machine. I’m still running Debian on my netbook, which now becomes quite valuable for that reason. But this laptop is what God provided and I’m going to use it for His glory. It’s no threat to His reputation if I can’t run Linux on it. I’m not going to waste time chasing 300 different Linux versions; that’s just a wacko obsession.

By the way, there is a thriving community of Vista users determined to keep it viable with or without Microsoft support, same as there is for XP, Win2K and even Win98. You can find them if you know where to look. So I’ve got a year to see what God can do, but in the meantime the ministry must go on.

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