BobDarnall.com

For the record, I don’t like to hear that a company that is in a ‘bailed out’ status is paying out any bonuses, because most americans aren’t seeing any bonuses these days. Now, you can play the PC game and call them ‘retention payments,’ because you’re paying them only to the best employees you want to retain, but again, how good can they be if they needed to be bailed out?

But that’s not my beef – what is my beef is the government trying to block or tax those payments. Even tho I don’t like them, I like far less the government trying to dictate who they feel should and shouldn’t be paid, and how much of it they want to tax outside the normal tax laws. You know, Bush did what he wanted using the fear of terrorism as justification – are we using the fear of economic disaster to justify unfair taxation and business intervention outside of regulation? Yes, and you should be afraid of this.

I’m posting this because I always forget it, and it may help you some day. First, if you’ve downloaded the OM ISO, you cannot mount it from a VMFS location. You must copy it to an ext filesystem, as in /home/user/. Then you can mount it with:
mount -r -o loop isoname.iso /mnt/cdrom
After the installation, you need to open the firewall to allow connections to see it – surprise, there isn’t a value for this in the security profile. As root, run the following:
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 1311 -j ACCEPT
Now, you’re good to go! Remember to use https://servername:1311 to get there.

Wisconsin is the latest state to implement a tax on digital downloads, something that I’m actually opposed to, but needs to be (prepare yourself) federalized. Think about this, I sell you a car and you live in the neighboring state. As the seller, I pay sales tax because I sold something. You don’t owe anything. Now, I can easily pass that tax to you as an expense – that is what is done at the stores you shop at.

The issue here, and what chaps my hide, is that these download taxes are really ‘purchase’ taxes – because in the above scenario, I still have to pay sales tax, but you also have to pay an additonal tax because your state feels like it is missing out. That is BS.

This logic is from idiots that believe anything you’re not charging for is ‘lost revenue.’

There’s a conspirator’s playground, and it is called technology.  When atomic power was first introduced, it was purely for the benefit of mankind – but not long after it was fitted into a bomb.  When you create or invent something, you need to presume that someone is going to pervert your design of use to fulfill some other’s vision.  Such is the case with the iPhone, as FoxNews reports here.  Imagine terrorists knowing where they are in a foreign city, with directions to get to all the attractions (or targets), with street level views to confirm they’re going the right way.  Hell, they can find McDonald’s on the way.

You know, Google maps is one of the best things ever created, and now with Google Latitude, you can see where your friends are and meet up anytime.  Great idea, right?  Except when I want to go to the bar with you and see that you’re at my girlfriends house – or when I want to get some and I see that she’s at your house – or that she can see me when I’m at your girlfriends house getting some.  Let alone that you know Google is watching, which means that soon enough, Uncle Sam is watching too.

It sounds like a good idea for people that want to keep in touch with their friends and calling, texting, and video chat isn’t enough… but what happens when you don’t want to be tracked?  What if, god forbid, you had a secret?

I’ve been following close adherence to the old adage, “If you don’t have something nice to say…”  But, I’m past that now. 

Today, I saw ignorance at i’s best with the dismissive attitude of a teenager vs. a self-centered elder, which ended with the elderly lady walking off giving the bird to everyone she saw and the youth wondering what her problem was.  While I’m not as bothered about it as I was, it disappointed me to see two people totally disrespecting themselves.  I disagree with a lot of people, but I try to respect their opinion.  That’s why people don’t flip me the bird.

But let’s talk about what really disappoints me – politicions.  First, apparently, nobody in politics pays their taxes, as we’ve seen from a lot of cabinet appointments from Pres. Obama.  It’s not his fault that everyone around him cheats the government – and I don’t even blame them, because everyone tries to pay less in taxes.  What bothers me is that when I owe at tax time, I never owe more than $100.  Even when Teri was self-employed and we didn’t pay her taxes regularly, but saved money away to owe a large sum on our return, we only owed in the neighborhood of $3,000.  These people owe tens of thousands of dollars.  And what really chaps my hide is that they can pay it in a week.  I don’t care if they have the money and I don’t – if they have the money, they should pay.  And what they owe is several times more than the guy who’s getting audited and fined for owing a few hundred dollars.

Then you’ve got Roland Burris vs. the Republicans.  First off, he wasn’t on the list Rod had of people that would pay to be nominated Senator.  That was why his appointment was so surprising – it was an actual appointment, not a kick-back.  Second, is race important as to who gets this senate seat?  You bet your ass it does.  Don’t get me wrong, I am against making quotas to enforce diversity, but when you don’t have any black people in the senate, you have to ask yourself what the deal is.  So, now with the Democratic ‘majority,’ able to get things moving, the Republicans can’t have that – so that’s why they keep beating the dead horse of how this seat shouldn’t be filled by a Democratic appointment, but an elected one – which is the only chance they have of getting another Republican seat.

Let me go on record loud and clear, I don’t like Republicans, and this is why.

First, I wish all of you a Merry Christmas. For those that celebrate something else, happy something else.

Second, sorry I haven’t written in a while. I’ve found that now that I have the means to keep a blog, I don’t have the time I’d like.

Lastly, take some time to pray for those you know – everyone could use some extra prayer. Pray for the recently laid off, the recently broke, and those that annoy you.