Unboring Saturday

Posted on July 18, 2015 by ehurst

No riding today. Not that I don’t feel energetic enough, but it’s feaking hot and it requires exceptional energy to face heat on long bike rides over the hills out here. So I settled for slapping on a knee brace and taking a hike. I think I got the very last sand plum to ripen in the immediate area, and it was perfectly ripe, indeed — sweet and juicy without a hint of bitterness.

While I did test CentOS 7 on my Dell 15-3542, I knew it was only testing. It can’t identify the touchpad on this thing, which is no surprise. This laptop is cheap, but it runs the latest Haswell series CPU and everything that goes with it. CentOS 7 is a little dated. So when I was finished with the various tests, I decided to try Debian 8 with KDE. I’ve never had any OS make the touchpad work this well. It has ranged from nightmare on Kubuntu to quite rough on Windows (7 & 8), and dead on CentOS 7. Without KDE on Debian 8, it was just manageable. With KDE, it’s actually usable and not infuriating. Dell used probably the cheapest touchpad product available from Snyaptic. Even though the official drivers from the Synaptic website are far better on Windows than what Dell provides, it is hard to make it usable on Windows under any condition. Now it behaves rather sanely.

As noted in the previous post, Bibletime was never properly released on Debian 8, so I grabbed the source from the developers’ GitHub site and built it from scratch. It works just fine. I’m working on Proverbs 15 today, and then I’ll have the weekly lesson in Psalms this evening. Believe it or not, studying Proverbs is not dreary, but it is time-consuming.

For the parish membership, I reaffirm that I no longer favor the NET Bible translation. I’ve come across too many places where the translators rather arbitrarily decided to guess at corrections to the text sources for the Old Testament. I don’t have any crazy hang-ups about the original Hebrew texts; the Hebrew people were pretty relaxed about that sort of thing. However, too often the resulting NET translation violates Hebrew literary patterns, though it won’t be obvious to anyone who doesn’t learn to use heart-logic for moral rendering. Head-scholarship isn’t good enough. So for now, I’ll use Green’s Modern King James Version (MKJV) here on the blog for the most part, and the New King James Version (NKJV) for most study references. At times, I might argue with any standard translation, so that’s not the point. These two are very similar and there are no copy restrictions on the MKJV, but you will have to supply modern punctuation (especially quotation marks). While I am well aware that they both rely too much on the Masoretic (Pharisaical) text, they do include the Septuagint more often and seldom engage in frivolous guessing as the NET translators do.

God bless you all.

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Outline: KDE on Debian 8

Posted on July 17, 2015 by ehurst

This is just an outline, not a full detailed explanation. I still consider XFCE the best desktop, but it is quite demanding on users migrating from Windows if you don’t have an acquaintance with the Unix approach to computers. KDE is more fully integrated. I confess it is still a tad buggy and always will be, but so is Windows in every version sold. My point here is that KDE comes the closest to the Windows pattern of use without actually being Windows.

I’ve noted in my free Debian books that there are some differences between the 64-bit and 32-bit versions. It depends on how you intend to use the computer whether it makes much difference. If you really need to run Windows stuff on it, WINE is very easy on 32-bit, but convoluted and challenging on the 64-bit version. I’ve already stated my recommendation that you run a virtual machine for the Windows stuff on 64-bit; it’s not that hard once you get it running.

In order to make the KDE installer fit on a CD, Debian folks had to make some tough decisions what to cut out. I don’t blame them that we need to add some of that back in after installing. I’ll cut to the chase and simply list here first the package names as you would find them using Synaptic or apt:

  • ufw
  • bleachbit
  • ntpdate
  • kde-config-gtk-style

The package ufw is the simplest firewall you can get. Once installed, you’ll need to log into a terminal window (Konsole in KDE) with your root credentials (“su root” and blindly typing the password) to activate the firewall with two commands:

ufw enable
ufw default deny

That’s it; it’s highly unlikely a typical desktop computer needs any further refinement on the firewall.

Bleachbit I’ve yakked about often enough as your browser cache and cookie cleaner. Ntpdate keeps your system clock updated to Internet time; just install and it takes care of the details itself. The last package is so you can set the appearance for things like Iceweasel (Firefox in disguise) and any version of Chrome/Chromium browser. If you have a laptop, I suggest you also install “kde-config-touchpad” because KDE won’t even find it otherwise. However, once installed it is pretty intelligent about the capabilities of the hardware.

Chances are you won’t have to mess with the sound or screen resolution. I do suggest you add your Windows fonts through the System Settings application, and you’ll probably want to enable “full” hinting. A primary complaint for folks coming over from Windows is that there are simply way too many options that you never got with Windows when it comes to all the crazy details. Worse, the default settings are unlikely to be comfortable. In general, you can follow the instructions I wrote for Kubuntu on the desktop configuration, covered in chapters 6, 7, and 8 for details. You can also add your own wallpaper or use Synaptic/apt to discover that KDE has an artwork package that includes a lot more.

If you like ebooks, you’ll want Calibre (notice the spelling) and it will require a little setup, but the defaults usually work fine. It displays almost every format you ever heard about, so you can download them to your Debian computer and read to your heart’s content.

A point of contention is browsers and email. If you can handle Thunderbird, then Debian calls it Icedove. If you are a masochist, install and try configuring Kmail. There are other clients available, so using a search engine and including terms like “debian email client” will load you up with lots of reading. However, I recently decided to stop supporting Chrome/Chromium browsers. I actually think you’d be better off with something like Slimjet from Flashpeak. Scroll down and take the generic packages, because the ones they claim are for Debian seldom work right. You’ll have to use the commandline to unzip it (unxz) and untar, and then move the folder to your Home. You’ll need to launch it from the commandline once (run the executable “flashpeak-slimjet” in that folder) and supply your root credentials to activate the sandbox — a security measure for browsing. Once that’s done, you’ll have to either create a launcher on your desktop or edit the K-menu to add it there. Basic principles are the same for any Linux desktop, so if you check my previous posts on Debian configuration in XFCE, it’s virtually identical in KDE. Learn to investigate things with right-click.

Also, every time Slimjet updates (they do the Flashplayer for you automatically), you have to delete your previous folder and replace with the new one, and run that sandbox thing again.

You can get Opera for the 64-bit version, but for 32-bit, you can only get the obsolete version. It still works, but it’s getting rough on some sites. For both Opera and Chromium, you’ll need to install Debian’s pepperflash Flashplayer. For use with Iceweasel, Firefox or Seamonkey, you’ll need the older style flashplugin package. You’ll have to learn how to update both versions manually because they are handled separately from the standard Debian packages. See this page for details; extrapolate if you have pepperflash by noting the package naming convention and the commands.

Notice that just about anything you download from outside the Debian system can be run from a folder in your Home directory, if it works at all. Sometimes you simply can’t get what you need from Debian, nor made for Debian. For some crazy reason you can’t get the Bibletime package yet for Debian 8. I recommend the Java version called Bible Desktop. It comes with a launcher script, but for any other Java application, both on the commandline and in your launcher, most Java apps are packaged primarily as a Jar file. This is the Linux incantation:

java -jar something.jar

For example, I like jShisen (a tiles game you can download free). With KDE you have the option of setting the working directory as you could with Windows, so it can save you some heartache when an executable file goes hunting for it’s supporting files, as jShisen tends to do. Keep your config and scores in the same folder with the game. Also, anything you download that includes a file ending in “.sh” is likely a Unix/Linux type script that probably makes it run without you having to figure out too much. Learn about permissions and making files executable scripts; it’s covered in several of my books and here on the blog, just search for “permissions”.

If your computer can handle SD cards, you’ll need to install a couple of packages for the exfat file system (exfat-utils and exfat-fuse). For external jump drives, you’re already covered, as is the case for most external hard drives, even NTFS. As often noted here, during installation of Debian, make sure you still have access to another system to download extra firmware files that may be missing from the standard Debian kernel packaging. On one laptop that was a RealTek (rtl) package and something for Atheros Bluetooth. After you’ve gotten it installed, try this command in a terminal window and see if the boot comments mention anything missing:

dmesg | grep firmware

That’s “dmesg” to display the boot messages, a “pipe” character (double upright stick looking thing), “grep” to search through the dmesg output so you don’t get a ton of useless details, and the word “firmware” as the key what you want it to find. You may get a line starting with numbers in square brackets followed by something about missing firmware. That’s your clue on using a search engine for Debian packages. If it says the firmware was loaded, then no problem.

Ask questions; you can post here in the comments or email me at any of several accounts. I check the Cox account most often.

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More Debian Coaxing

Posted on July 17, 2015 by ehurst

In response to an offline query — Folks in general are reluctant to learn about computer security. For all our reliance on computer technology, our society is amazingly ignorant of it. Indeed, you can sense a vast undercurrent of resistance to learning. This is intentional. That is, the folks in government and business don’t want you interested in that stuff.

This is all a part of the elitist attitude that dreads having to handle human freedom of choice. Uniformity is an utter necessity for them, and the best single tool is ignorance. Not just ordinary ignorance due to lack of exposure, but an enforced ignorance from actively hiding the information. The whole point of the Microsoft MVP program, for example, is to create a barrier to ordinary folks. It’s not just hiding stuff behind educational barriers, but intentionally finding ways to make it Byzantine (highly complex or intricate and devious, intended to torture the mind and discourage). The folks who design the system management look for ways to obfuscate, coming up with the most bizarre names and layouts possible to protect their control over user behavior.

Part of this is the fundamental weirdness of geek culture in the first place, but it has a huge amount of corporate psychopathy added in the mix. So while Linux might be a little confusing, it is not intentionally so, just confusing because it’s designed by people who understand the rest of us very poorly. Their “norms” are quirky, to say the least. Some of them are frankly hostile to our ordinariness — to wit, the guy who originally designed Kmail. I’m told by someone who knew him personally that he was spiteful and abusive to us ordinary folks and harbored a strange despite for anyone who wasn’t as much of a genius as himself. Those folks are part of the Open Source community, but they don’t have the social intelligence to dominate in any organized fashion. They understand computers, not people and definitely not organizational politics.

The folks who do manage the projects aren’t quite that obnoxious and they intend for the system to work and don’t want to actively deny access to the inner workings for the most part. So while a certain amount of Windows stuff is within reach, going beyond that requires a concerted effort most people don’t have time to invest in something that changes so frequently. In Linux Land, once you learn something, it isn’t arbitrarily thrown out next year simply to keep you chasing your tail.

Let me reiterate: The folks who design Windows and similar software want your money and your loyalty, but they have no intention of getting it honestly. They are desperately struggling to keep you in the dark and shape your mental habits and typical human weakness to exploit you to the max. It shows up all over the technology market.

Google advertising? They intentionally took over the market; it was an evil plot with the darkest of motives, guided and assisted by several government agencies. They created an atmosphere that is so overwhelming that you cannot escape. They give just a little to scratch an old itch, and take back from you everything not nailed down. So now, when Google Adsense orders you to change your content or lose their support, you can’t afford to argue or you’ll lose the one avenue you have to get your message out.

The system tolerates Linux because they can’t afford to alienate the geeks who make it possible for them to oppress us. Yes, it takes a little time and effort, but if you need the Internet and the means of global instant communications that it offers — I sure need it — then you can either be a mindless slave to the corporate interests and their herding methods, or you can take the initiative to invest a little time on something that will free up your other resources.

Debian Linux is free and runs very well on old computers. It runs pretty well on cheap computers made from junk commodity parts. It can be coaxed into providing just about all the same usages you get from Windows, but you will need to spend some time learning it. I’ve published two recent free books on getting started — Debian 8 for Beginners and More Debian 8 for Beginners. I’m here to help you and what I don’t know I can help you find out. Keep your money and your sanity, too. Go ahead and bug me; I dare you.

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Refresh: I Recommend Debian

Posted on July 16, 2015 by ehurst

While I still believe that CentOS with all it’s locked down design is best for the average home/home-office user, it’s too confining for someone like me. Thus, I run Debian on all of my systems. On newer laptops, in particular, I recommend Debian 8. If you really need a full desktop environment, select the KDE desktop during installation. Or, you can just download the KDE installer CD — typically you’ll want 64-bit, but for older machines, maybe the standard 32-bit (links current as of this writing).

On 64-bit, I now recommend you forgo the WINE installation and just run the free VMWare Player or for something simpler, try Virtual Box supplied by Debian itself. I’ve already covered the installation of both on previous blog posts. The only thing I note is that, on KDE, the installer run as root will be console only. It’s not that hard to follow if you have the kernel headers and build-essential packages installed.

At any rate, if you have a little more time and patience to learn Linux, it’s very hard to beat the latest release of Debian 8.

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Photolog 12: Good Days and Bad

Posted on July 16, 2015 by ehurst

Just a reminder: all images are clickable for a larger view.

QuietMWCStreetFirst, let me refer you back to a previous post about the Midwest City ride I took on a rainy day. Today I completed the intended loop. The first part of the journey was pretty much as I described there, to include my effort to dodge the traffic on the main roads. Two unusual events just prior to shooting this image of the quite backstreets of Midwest City. First, I spotted Air Force One still sitting next to the military air terminal on Tinker AFB. It was easy to see from SE 29th, but a pair of vehicles from the state’s Dept. of Transportation were making sure folks didn’t pull over and linger there on the side of the road just across from the north end of the runway.

Second, as I passed the back side of the Sheriff’s substation just another quarter-mile along there, I spotted my son on a riding mower. You see, he’s a sheriff’s deputy and they want an armed and uniformed officer doing their maintenance stuff. So among his other duties, which is primarily department vehicle maintenance, he also mows a lot of county property. However, just south of the 552nd AWACS monument, I stopped off for a bit of nostalgia.

I left the US Army in early 1993. They wanted me to stay and offered a promotion board to E-6 and Jump School (hard to get into), plus the next level of leadership academy. They were ready to ignore my bad knees, but my knees told me staying in would be a huge mistake. They were right. Shortly after coming back to Oklahoma, a cane was no longer enough. I switched to forearm crutches, then to a wheelchair. It took two years before the VA Hospital in OKC could get me in for surgery. During that time I first drove a taxi for a year, then went back to school on VA Vocational Rehab to become a school teacher (Secondary Social Studies).

We moved into a house in Del City, essentially making the payments for the owner, someone my wife knew as a family friend. After a couple of years there, he lost the house in a divorce and his ex-wife had to nerve to ask us to stay for double the previous rent. She even tried flirting with me. We moved to a trailer park about a mile east, nestled up against the backside of Tinker AFB. It had once been their FamCamp (family camping area) but the Air Force sold it off. The new owners eventually made it into a decent trailer park. We were there for over three years.

RoyalCreekSpaceDuring that time, I was in and out of the wheelchair. There were months when the knees stayed swollen and, even though they hurt while I was sitting, it was worse walking. At other times, just wearing neoprene compression sleeves was enough to get me on my feet. During the good days, I decided to improve the lot where our trailer sat. We were backed up against a creek and part of the lot was washing away. In fact, an adjacent lot was far enough gone they refused to put any trailers there. So I waded out in the creek during dry weather when it was just ankle to knee deep and pulled out rocks. Along the back where a fence once stood, I created a retaining wall by carefully stacking the rocks tightly together. BackDoorRoyalCreekThen over a month or so I would carry soil in a 5-gallon bucket up from a spot where the creek had a massive sand bank. Some 30-40 buckets later, the yard was restored. They eventually put the fence back up. I used some of those stones to create a patio of sorts to raise the back steps up to a proper height. While the timbers got moved, the stones remain pretty much where I placed them (image on the left). Today the lot stands empty, as you can see in the picture above (right).

The greenery at the back was not there during the late 1990s when we lived there. Could you get close enough, you’d see a lot of flood debris. This entire section of the park is almost empty, with only two out of ten spaces still occupied, and even those trailers are vacant. While we were there, during one rainy night a bunch of tree limbs got caught against the bridge a little way upstream and diverted the water out over our road. We got a foot or two of water that night. Apparently our more recent spring flooding really made a mess there, and all of those spaces in the lowest part next to the creek got flooded even worse, so I’m sure the new management (same corporation as the one we have now) decided to leave it empty as too flood-prone.

We were also there during a severe tornado: May 3rd in 1999. The only viable shelter for us that evening was the brick clubhouse, where a large number of residents packed inside while the skies grew dark. The tornado passed just a quarter-mile west of us. The floor vibrated and the rumble reminded me of standing next to a railroad track when a heavy loaded train passed by. We emerged to find debris all over the place. Despite the lack of power, we were okay for a few days until the police came out and set up road blocks to “keep looters out.” By the time I convinced them there was actually a trailer park back off in the trees there, my two bags of ice had nearly melted in the trunk.

AirDepotBikePathHeading back south and along the bottom end of the Tinker runway and past the back gates where the former GM assembly plant stands, there was no rain to stop me. On the right here we see the long ramp running up the hill from the southern end of Air Depot Boulevard. Just beyond is a police gun range (the corner of a white building peeking through the trees), but I climbed the bike path up and around in big lazy circles. If you use something like Google Earth or Google Maps to catch a satellite view southwest of Tinker and northwest of Draper Lake, only recently did the imagery show it in completed form (the gray curving line below Interstate 240). DraperBikePathSatview You have to see it to believe it, because for this part of the country, that was pretty extravagant for such a remote location. Most of it is near the highest elevation in that area. Somebody mows it pretty regularly, but except for a brief swoop down through a draw, there are no trees. It’s pretty ugly (right). DraperBikePath That is, until you look off the path to the south. While I failed to capture them with the camera, several horses were cavorting gayly on the slopes above the trees. My pocket camera can’t do it justice (below left).

WestDraperCountryFrom there I kept going straight east along Draper Lake Drive where the road loops around the north end of the lake. Workmen were still banging around on the concrete on the new paved section, so I had to slow for the heavy equipment. Still, at the far end of this section I kept going straight east on SE 89th. That meant another hump up over the trio of razor-back ridges between Anderson and Hiwasee Roads. It was worth it, because I got to check on the progress of the washout repair on Hiwasee where the West Branch of Hog Creek crosses.HiwaseeWHogCreekHalf While I could hardly ride across the fill dirt, it was easy enough to walk my bike through that stuff and head home on the other side. As always, riding through any part of the Hog Creek valley system is just beautiful.

Where Hiwasee and SE 59th merge to cross over I-40, I decided to stay on 59th and roll home on Henney. It was a good chance to grab a few blackberries where they grow in someone’s fence. In all, about 25 miles, but it took three hours because I wandered around the Meridian trailer park for a bit.

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Refresh: I Recommend CentOS

Posted on July 15, 2015 by ehurst

On the one hand, I despise most of what passes for Linux advocacy. Most Linux advocates are computer geeks. The computer geek culture is not at all mainstream, and cannot ever be mainstream. Geeks are geeks because they don’t even understand the mainstream. They turn to computers because it’s less confusing for them; computers and other geeks are their friends, and they are on the fringe of society — harmless and useful, but not full participants. I’m not a part of that, though I do understand it fairly well.

There are degrees of this; it’s not a matter of hard, compartmentalization of humanity. There is a much larger part of society for whom computers do matter, and they know far more than the average, but it’s all about how computers serve other needs. Geeks adore their computers as a need in itself. For the rest of us, we need our computers and we need them under our control.

Here’s the fundamental pitch: If you run Linux on your computer, you will retain ultimate control. At the same time, you will find yourself — at best — often on the fringes of mainstream consumer computer usage. That’s the intended result of predatory marketing by corporate fascists. They want control and will use both government force and popular cultural deception to make sure no one questions the utter necessity of giving them all our money.

There are problems enough with the hardware. While the theories have been bandied about for some decades, in recent years people have actually begun using software and techniques to bypass the operating system entirely and gain direct control over the hardware. They can do this because of something call “firmware” — little chunks of software built into the hardware itself, stored in tiny memory registers. It makes stuff run better when the OS doesn’t have to do all the work itself, but can rely on some of the hardware to intelligently interact with the system. Over the past decade there has been a vast increase in hardware that comes with firmware, and the firmware can be hacked. Most hardware manufacturers are egregiously careless, even hatefully stupid at times, in leaving this insecure to hacking.

That is, the same kind of thinking that goes into building operating systems with back doors has infested the whole industry. The manufacturers leave back doors for their own convenience, and sometimes because some other entity pays them to do it, or threatens them if they don’t. It’s hard to be sure, and sometimes it’s several reasons at once. If you use Windows, you already have a massive collection of back doors. The same folks who have poked around and discovered how to write viruses and other malware that bypass user controls have also figured out things like default passwords built into your home internet router, or other bits of commodity hardware. The difference between an independent criminal hacker and a government hacker is that the latter have more and better access to the secrets and are more likely to hurt you with it.

Running something like CentOS isn’t a total solution, but it does make things much more difficult for all kinds of hackers trying to take control of your system away from you. For one thing, the NSA itself is responsible for some of the security features in CentOS. That’s because CentOS is simply the free version of Red Hat, and NSA uses Red Hat a lot. And because of the way Linux works, the NSA gave back their extra security measures so that the non-government developers could look at those security measures as Open Source software and make it even better. What protects the NSA from hacking is what protects CentOS from hacking.

Furthermore, should our government get around making crazy demands about what you can and cannot run on your private computer, it would be very hard for them say you cannot run CentOS. It’s the free version of Red Hat and fully protected by the company, sponsored as an official extension of their own product. If the NSA wants to keep using Red Hat — they can’t afford not to — they have to allow us ordinary folks to run CentOS. And CentOS is just as secure as the NSA computers, once you take the time to learn a little about it.

One real advantage: CentOS has no hidden back doors, no secret levels of access and control that you don’t know about. The folks who produce CentOS are not secretive at all, and are watched by thousands of others — others all over the world, many of whom despise the US government — to insure it stays safe. In other words, we can take advantage of the geeky computer culture to gain some pretty serious computer security for ourselves. About as much as a human can trust anything at all in this world, we can trust the Linux community in general and CentOS in particular when it comes to security and keeping control in the user’s hands.

Did you know that Windows has two levels of permission above the owner of the computer? One level is for software companies that pay for a Microsoft developers’ license, and then there’s another level above that for Microsoft’s own controls. Not even the best third-party security software can prevent MS from wiping their OS from your system, or making any changes they like while it runs, to include giving the same access to anyone they like. With CentOS, there is no way that can happen. If you have the root password, nobody can interfere with your control of the system. There is no higher authority. There will always be a few ways around that, but those ways are considered security bugs to be fixed when anyone finds out (fixed and updated right away, not just once a month). In other words, hacking into a CentOS system that is running the default configuration out of the box will be very difficult, and most of the uber-hackers in crime and government won’t even try it.

Yes, if you’ve allowed yourself to be pampered by the convenience of Windows with all the entertainment and ease of use, it will be a hard move. There are things you have to do in making that change that aren’t exactly simple, but once you do it, and you get used to how it all works, it makes you a very hard target for anyone who hasn’t got their hands on your computer.

I will even go so far as to tell you the Debian is far better, but also far more complicated for the user. It’s a lot more learning and probably not quite as secure as CentOS. Part of what makes CentOS so secure is that, beyond a certain level of common workstation operations, it is very hard to make changes in how things work. Debian is far more versatile, though again, it’s more complicated from the start. I prefer Debian because I have the time to mess with it and need the extra freedom of choice, but if that isn’t you, and you need heavy-duty security that is pretty simple, then I recommend CentOS.

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Photolog 11: New Harrah Loop

Posted on July 14, 2015 by ehurst

I’ve decided to permanently change the Harrah Loop I use. This is part of my effort to make my typical rides longer than 30 miles (48km) by default. In theory, the Harrah Loop now starts near my home at SE 29th and Henney Road on the southwest corner, and the northeast corner is Wilshire Boulevard and Harrah Road. However, today’s ride was clockwise and we have several indentations in this huge rectangle, but it still turns out to be 31 miles.

DenseGrowthRolling north on Henney to NE 23rd is quite routine for me. This is the route into Choctaw’s shopping area and I’ve ridden and driven this four mile strip countless times. Today we simply kept going north. As noted in the past, Henney Road dodges some nameless creek bottom that feeds into the North Canadian. The creek bottom is impenetrable native regrowth from way back whenever the roads were laid out, easily a century in the past. This time of year you see more willow than anything else, but I’ve gotten closer at both ends just to see, and I doubt any humans have put foot to the banks in a very long time.

Another mile north brings us to Wilshire, where we turn east. Because Choctaw Road itself takes a jog around the terrain, we pass the north branch first, then the southerly branch a quarter-mile or so farther.NCanNE63rd It’s dicey when traffic is heavy, but that’s almost never. Instead, it’s just a couple of nice curves along the lip of a faint ridge line above the North Canadian. Dropping down toward the river, I stopped to take a look. This image on the left should help readers get an idea of how a river like this can wander and change its course. Looking south, here we see that by sheer volume and momentum in one direction, it drove against the western bank until it slowed enough to be redirected along its previous course. As the water level dropped, what’s left is a huge sand bank on the inside of the curve. I was unable to capture it with the camera, but a lot of work had been done on the other side of the same bridge where the river came close to cutting out one anchor of the bridge. A huge amount of concrete and stone rubble was dropped over the bank and packed in place to prevent further washout.

Still on Wilshire, we pass the State Center School again and turn right on Triple X. There are barricades on Wilshire beyond that and I haven’t checked, so I don’t know if the washout over the hill from there has been repaired. Some driver pulled up alongside and asked where he could find Luther Road, and I told him just keep going east another couple of miles, but I was distracted and didn’t think about warning him of the barricades. I had no plans to follow it that far because, as noted the last time I was out there, Wilshire doesn’t go through the Harrah Road in the first place.

South on Triple X — this is that huge flat where cyclist so love to ride — and I headed down to NE 63rd. One of these days I need to see if Google Earth is right about it connecting among the farms with Indian Meridian. The road says “Dead End” on it, but all the mapping services show it going through. But then again, the mapping services put the Mission Airfield out in a sloped corn patch. I checked with the folks at the Seventh Day Adventist Oklahoma Academy and they affirmed that the airfield is up on the ridge next to the school, and across the street from the store.

So it was a nice easy climb up NE 63rd. This time I stopped to capture the SDA retirement center there.SDARetCtr I pretty much had to park my bike in the driveway because there isn’t much margin on NE 63rd there. Farther up the hill is the Country Store.

If you don’t understand the way SDA folks are about food, you’ll have to read up on it. For the most part, they eat vegetarian and are big fans of what most folks call “health food.” The little store probably began as the school store for the students, most of whom aren’t old enough to drive. This place is way out in the country, so the store’s name isn’t a joke.SDACountryStore It’s tiny and offers lots of vegetarian stuff, some basic herbs and organic breads, and a few school supplies. Nice folks but as you might expect, the prices are a little high because they support the academy. I believe they get their produce in bulk from Crest Foods, so it’s an extra mark-up. I paid just over a dollar (US) for a couple of apples (Gala and Fuji).

Farther eastward on NE 63rd is the northern part of Wind Drift Orchard, closed for replanting. They bought out another orchard over on NE 50th that used to offer some really great peaches, a very wide variety of specialty stuff. However, they seem have chosen to replant a lot of both properties. All I know is they were dismissive about my inquiry when I saw they had taken away the best stuff, so I never went back. What they kept was commodity grade crap that commercial pickers wipe out before they open to the public for picking what’s left. Not nice people.

It’s a quiet ride back to Harrah Road. I stopped at my favorite picnic spot down on NE 36th and ate one of the apples with my sardines. (Yes, I love sardines and kippers, but you can keep that canned tuna and salmon.) The Horseshoe Lake electric plant was actually audible, humming and not quite roaring in the low breezes of the day. I then road south across the river and into Harrah. The little town was quiet as usual, and I saw very few folks. Indeed, I ran into more humans on the bike path than anywhere in town. I couldn’t resist stopping again at the blackberry patch growing along Dobbs Road starting near NE 10th there. Some vines are farther along, with more black than red, but farther south they were more red than black. Still, what I found was quite ripe and so very yummy.

I rode on down to SE 15th, then back west to Indian Meridian. Traffic was down on SE 29th, for which I was grateful. Slipping over to my preferred route on SE 29th Place, in just a short time I was home again. With the stop for shopping and for the picnic, it was a total time of 3.5 hours. I am striving to make a habit of pedaling through the downslopes because my old joints seem to stiffen just a bit if I coast too much. Then again, elite riders say you never stop stroking even if there’s no resistance. Still, I was surprised how much water I had left given the temperature. I started with two 24oz bottles and a pair of one-quart military canteens. One of the later was untouched when I got home. We are in a very hot cycle right now, hitting the high 90s F (33+ C) for a week or more.

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Terminal Notes

Posted on July 13, 2015 by ehurst

The title is merely my dark sense of humor: I’m making some necessary adjustments in my computer ministry.

I’ll help you with Win7 and Vista. I’ll give you some limited help with Win8. I’ll help you a lot with running XP in a virtual machine (VM) or even earlier versions of Windows. Lots of really great software won’t run otherwise. However, I will not even investigate running Win10. If you upgrade to that, you are on your own.

After reading the commentary from professional security researchers and real computer technicians, along with published writings of those who keep track of government policy regarding such things, I cannot in good conscience go any farther with Windows. There was a time when Windows was designed to sell your eyeballs to advertisers. You as a Windows user was the product Microsoft sold to their business partners. But over the past few years, the snooping and monitoring have gone too far — way too far. Not just the loss of privacy, but that the snooping now takes priority over any usability. Microsoft is so dedicated to tracking you in every detail that they are willing to break your system in order to promote even more snooping. (Google’s Android is no better.)

I can’t emphasize this enough: I’ve spent a lot of time fixing stuff that MS broke for my clients. Updates are wiping out user profiles and people can’t logon. The typical fixes are simple enough for me, but convoluted processes most users can’t navigate. Further, MS and all her experts cannot even come up with a consistent explanation why it happens. Some machines never see it, but others do it consistently. Some users see it all the time even when they replace the machines with really good hardware. These are people who never run anything atypical, just read the MSM news and check their email — standard mainstream consumer stuff. No malware, no viruses, nothing like that, but their system breaks every freaking time Windows updates.

I’m not the only person convinced it’s due to undetected surveillance crap.

I could go on at length. For example, that damned little application that now runs in the SysTray advertising the free upgrade to Win10 itself keeps crashing and seems to break other stuff. The point is not that I’m unwilling to help you; I cannot.

If you need to know about migrating to Linux/BSD/Unix, I’ll be glad to help you. I don’t recommend Macs, but I know a little about them and you can get a lot of help with those from other sources. But my work with Windows is “terminal” — I can’t go any farther with it. This has nothing to do with being a fanboy, because all operating systems suck. I take no part in the religious fanaticism of the Linux fan clubs. It’s really about protecting you and your actual control of your own computer. I don’t even care about the privacy so much, but the increasing loss of choices, the demand that you lie down for virtual rape by just about any passing hacker, government or otherwise, is more than I can tolerate.

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Oriented

Posted on July 12, 2015 by ehurst

In strictest terms, to “orient” oneself is to face the east as the place of the rising sun. It so happens that, in terms of fundamental assumptions about reality, we would do far better to face the Ancient Near East, to look upon the dawn of humanity, as the source of clues.

Even if I could convince you that were true, I cannot make your eyes see what mine see. All I can do is offer to describe what I believe I see, and you can make of it what you will.

As I note often, today’s Western Civilization is a blend of proto-European mythology and Greco-Roman learning. That’s pretty much the substance of the pinnacle of Western culture we call The Enlightenment. In particular, the US is Anglo-Saxon mythology with some pretense to Greco-Roman philosophy. Our Constitution is very much an Enlightenment document. The value system is what Anglo-Saxons learned from reading the classical literature, with a little eclectic mixing from a few other European sources.

If there is any one word that describes today’s American culture, as previously noted here, it is solipsism. However, that is little different from the essential nature of the Fall, that awful choice mankind made in the Garden of Eden.

And the serpent said to the woman, “You shall not surely die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4-5 MKJV)

Notice that the issue is not knowing the nature of things descriptively, but the nature of things morally. That’s the fundamental question of all valid human consideration. Everything else is just details. Furthermore, God has proved that He can remake factual reality on the fly, but that morality reflects His own living character woven into Creation. So the question is not the being of things in our world. And our interest in the doing of things — how things tend to work — is secondary only to how we can use them to find God’s favor. One of my favorite taglines is: All Creation is but a tool for His glory.

So the fundamental question for humanity is more of instrumentality in light of commitment. We have a vast ocean of literature striving mightily to define morality from any possible source except revelation, but it’s simply not possible. You will have to start somewhere with some basic assumptions about good and evil, because logic itself cannot answer the question. If you start from your inner assumptions, it’s just solipsism.

The only useful place to start is with the acknowledgement of our sinful nature. We are fallen and worthy of damnation by default. We then must come and make peace with the One who made all things. Making peace with Him includes a fundamental assumption that it will require all your living resources until you die. Thus, the only valid question for us in this life is what pleases our Creator.

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Psalm 58

Posted on July 11, 2015 by ehurst

As with the previous psalm, this one uses the tune of “Do Not Destroy.” And like many other psalms, the Hebrew poetic grammar is quite difficult. In this case, I cannot go with the NET Bible’s translation work, so we will follow here the NKJV and the MKJV.

We dare not forget that apparent real-world outcomes are not the priority among the ancient Hebrew people. If all you have are your senses and intellect, you’ll never really understand anything that matters. David’s lyric expressions echo so very much of what we find in other Ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature, in that the desired result of a good life is the assurance in your heart of moral certainty that comes only from Heaven. It may not look successful to mere human perception, but when you have genuine peace in your soul, that is what counts most of all.

We also need to remember that context is everything and David presumes here living in the covenant society of Israel, not as a stranger among Gentiles. Thus, in the latter we would be careful what we speak about a heart-led drive for divine justice without first establishing the credibility to speak. We would give far greater emphasis to “mind your own business” among sinners. However, in Israel, the Covenant demands you speak the moral discernment of your heart to a nation required to care about revelation. Thus, David’s first lines use typical Hebrew parallelism to berate those who act like mere men of flesh with no heart because of their silence in the face of sin. Whatever happened to righteous moral indignation? It lies silent when human reasoning has corrupted the heart. In the second verse David castigates these silent ones who are too focused on their own desires to care about justice. If you don’t serve Jehovah with a fully committed heart, then you serve the Devil and his violence.

In the next three verses David characterizes the sinful hearts. Men are born into sin, but these folks have no consciousness of it. Their earliest cries do not reflect any genuine human need, just a desire to make others miserable. It’s like trying to charm a deaf snake. The best serpent charmer’s skills mean nothing if the snake cannot hear the music and other sounds used to keep them calm. Just so, the sweetest words of truth seem to pass right over these folks’ heads.

Three more verses follow in which David calls on God to pour out His wrath on such people. Defang them; let them run down to the sea like a stream channel that rushes without encountering any flat spots or turns. Let their weapons of harm be too fragile for use. David uses a common image of his people — it’s not as if they actually believed a snail was dissolving in leaving the slime trail, but it looked for all the world like that. So let it be with the wicked who closed their hearts to the truth. Like someone who never saw the light of day, take away what little savvy they might posses to harm others. These are things God promised to do when His people were faithful to the Law.

In the final three verses, David declares that God is not idle. All the more so in a society where the people care what God wants, they give Him room to act against sin. It was common to use dried thorn branches as kindling for a cooking fire, so before they even start to crackle, God is preparing His wrath like a whirlwind strong enough to blow out the flames and carry the pot away. Westerners tend to balk at the image of rejoicing in God’s vengeance, but it’s a common expression in the Old Testament. It’s wider implication is celebrating the death of your own sin nature, too. Who wouldn’t delight in that? But these are things visible only from an awakened heart of moral perception. Mere intellect cannot measure the genuine truth of God’s character revealed in His Word. But people who are committed with to a heart-led life in His truth will rejoice at how He manifests Himself in these ways.

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