Being a hard-core server guy, I always scoffed when people would ask “PC or Mac.” Neither, of course, I actually prefer Solaris. At home, I typically have maintained a Windows desktop or two for the fam, running on commodity intel hardware (the kind Dell and HP dump as loss leaders for $400-500 a pop, including a decent monitor). Our Web server runs Linux, of course, and it serves as yet another desktop, running OpenSUSE with the KDE desktop manager.

The kids have become equally comfortable logging on with their Linux accounts or using the Windows desktops. I always figured someday I’d just convert the Windows machines to Linux, but as long as they’re working, why borrow trouble.

Now, I’ve dabbled in digital recording, and I decided I’d set up the Web server to do double duty as a home recording machine. That didn’t work out so well, for a number of reasons.

• Installed Rosegarden from packages using Yast.
• Had to get a real-time kernel from a non-standard repository.
• Had to get jackd properly installed, and talking to alsa
• I think I’m finally getting somewhere, but alsa keeps forgetting about my sound card, and, worst of all…
• I recently upgraded to OpenSUSE 11.2, and with that came KDE 4, which totally borked the desktop. Xorg will run at 100% CPU if you have more than one desktop session logged in. Tried to downgrade to KDE 3. That didn’t work. Tried to just switch to Gnome. That didn’t work. Tried to reinstall KDE 3. That didn’t work. Tried to reinstall KDE 4. That didn’t work. Removed monitor and put unit back under the desk to be a dedicated (headless) Web server. That works.

So, while I really appreciate the spirit of open source software, and have long been a proponent of it on the back end, I’ve also been patiently waiting for it to be ready for the desktop… it’s closer, but still not there.

On the other hand, Apple has had the creative arts as a captive market for decades. Since what I really want is a machine that I can plug in and use as a recording studio, Apple is the logical choice. From hardware to drivers to OS to apps, there are no disconnects or mismatches.

It comes loaded with RAM and a really nice, built-in monitor. It’s not the first Mac I’ve owned; I had a Quadra 604 in the 90s and the University put a first gen Mac in my dorm room way back when first gen Macs were brand new (yes, 1984).

Now do you think I’m cool?

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…and so is the blog server! Been moving house, so haven’t had time to update things around here. I shut down my other blog, so I prolly oughta update this one every now and again.

Here’s what it looks like around here in the morning:

Here’s what’s on my mind instead of school politics: apple blossoms

…and Trillium (the flower, not the charter school… snort!).

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My wife friggin’ rocked the school board last Monday… they didn’t voter our way, but I think we made them uncomfortable. All power to the people, sister!

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I was planning on addressing the school board tonight, but they’re limiting us to three speakers. So they’re having me address the rally ahead of time. Here’s what I’ve got:

Regardless of the curriculum offered by STARBASE in exchange for access to our preteens, there is a civil rights question to be answered: Is this military recruiting aimed at poor and minority students?

The second half of that question is easily answered. The Portland STARBASE Web site says the program is aimed at “at-risk youth.” Fourteen of the 18 schools participating this year are Title 1 schools, and the students at these schools are disproportionately non-white and poor when compared to the district as a whole.

The recruiting question is pretty clear to me, too, even though students, parents and teachers may love the program, and even if they don’t detect recruitment.

I want you to join me in a thought experiment tonight.

Some of you have been ten-year-old boys, and some of you have had ten-year-old sons or grandsons or nephews. I want you all to pretend, just for a minute or two, that you are all ten-year-old boys.

Boys of all ages love things that go. Things that go fast: even better. Now, as a ten-year-old boy, listen as I describe some of what you will see at Portland Air Base.

This base is home of the 142nd fighter wing, a fleet of F-15 Eagle fighter bombers. This supersonic twin-engine jet airplane is so light and powerful that it can accelerate into a vertical climb, like a rocket. The thrust of its engines is greater than its total weight, so it can make sharp turns without losing air speed. The F-15 has a thrilling combination of speed, maneuverability, high tech weapons, and avionics, including heads-up instrumentation display. This is one of the most performant vehicles in the world, and the only people who get to fly them are in the military.

The F-15 Eagle is typically outfitted with a variety of industrial weapons, like the Sparrow, AMRAAM and Sidewinder missiles and a 20 mm Gatling-style cannon, capable of firing depleted uranium shells at up to 7,200 rounds per minute. A modified version of the F15, the Strike Eagle, can deliver the B61, a multi-kiloton thermonuclear bomb.

In use since 1974, the F15, with all its various armaments, is among the deadliest, most formidable weapons systems on the planet. It continues to be a key piece of US air superiority, able to outperform every conceivable enemy aircraft. It is widely used by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as by Israel, Saudi Arabia and Japan.

Now, I know a lot of ten-year-old boys who would be getting pretty excited about this. The STARBASE Web site shows children climbing into the cockpit of an F-15 Eagle.

Without knowing anything about the curriculum, or anything about the base tour, or anything about the hour and a half talk about military careers that ends STARBASE, I’m here to tell you that showing a ten-year-old boy this aircraft, possibly introducing him to its pilot, is a form of recruitment.

The military’s recruiting manual notes the importance of contact with very young students as soon as they start thinking about the future. Many of the boys in my daughter’s fifth grade class are already talking about joining the military, even before they go to STARBASE.

So:

It doesn’t matter if students return from STARBASE and say there is no recruiting.

It doesn’t matter if some parents don’t think their children are bein recruited.

It doesn’t matter if teachers say the curriculum is great.

It doesn’t matter that the program is taught by civilians, and no recruiters are present for most of the program.

If the Departement of Defense considers this a recruiting program, it is a recruiting program.

A military recruiting program aimed at poor and minority preteens is a civil rights violation, and we should not be taking part.

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STARBASE, the Department of Defense’s childhood recruitment program, has been buying access to our children through Portland Public Schools for something like seventeen years. The school board is poised to approve selling access to another round of predominately poverty-affected, non-white fourth and fifth graders Monday.

Communities for Alternatives to Starbase Education (Facebook and Twitter), a group of mothers opposed to sending children to military bases at a time of war, will be there to help educate the public about this program (since the district doesn’t seem to like to share much information with families, even if they share student information with the military), with a press conference and rally at district headquarters. They’ve got the support of Jobs with Justice, Whitefeather Peace House, Students United for Nonviolence, the Oregon Peace Institute and the American Friends Service Committee’s Peace Building Program.

This peace-loving dad is also supporting courageous mothers everywhere who stand up for their children, and would love to see other conscious parents and children there, too:

• Blanchard Education Service Center (BESC) 501 N. Dixon St., two blocks from the east end of the Broadway Bridge, just north of Memorial Coliseum.
• 6 p.m., Monday, March 8, International Women’s day.

From the CASE Facebook page:

Come out to testify against or bear witness as the Portland Public School Board votes to allow military recruitment, under the guise of science education, of our children in grades K-5.

Military bases are not designed for children, they are not playgrounds.

Military bases, including our local Armory, store toxic materials and jet fuels; not safe for children.

We are a country at war, military bases are not safe places for civilians, especially children, during wartime. They are targets.

Military personnel returning from active duty may suffer unpredictable and often violent behavior as a result of service. Luckily no children were injured on the base in Texas when such an incident occurred.

Of the 18 schools participating in this program all but 4 are Title 1 schools. All but three have higher percentages of minority students, and all but four have higher poverty.

Violence is on the increase in our public schools and culture. Exposing our young, impressionable children to exciting, high tech, high powered, weapons will not help in our struggle to move toward a more tolerant and peaceful society.

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I started this blog nearly four years ago at the urging of my lovely wife.

I’ve never been a consistent blogger. At first, I obsessed on national and international politics, then took a local turn with Portland school politics. That blew up, so I put it on its own blog, which has since taken on a life of its own. I can’t even keep up with it myself some weeks.

Now, I hardly blog here at all. I’ve considered just mothballing it for a while, but Wacky Mommy says I must continue. Maybe a domestic blog? I’ve got mad vegetarian kitchen skillz, and I’m an organic gardener from before anybody had heard of such things. (Yawn. No so into that angle.)

She also said I should do a dad blog, but again, yawn. It’s so done. I’m a nerd by day, but tech blogs seriously bore the shit out of me. I like taking photos, but I’m no pro… I follow local politics, but I’m about ready to move the hell out to the country and paint my mailbox blue.

I like hockey, but I don’t actually follow hockey, so I’m a terrible sports blogger. I’ve got some new media ideas I’m pursuing, but I can’t talk about that just yet.

So… It will continue to be quiet around here for a while. Here’s to a happy solstice, a merry christmas, and a happy new year.

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Wherein Loaded Orygun’s “torridjoe” calls Blue Oregon’s Kari Chisolm “a condescending dick.”

In the department of unintentional hilarity, this is one of the best entries I’ve read on local blogs recently. Chisholm, whose Blue Oregon blog is a de facto organ for the Democratic Party of Oregon, makes his living selling Web sites to politicians and shills for them on his own blog and others. One well-placed source told me, “The nicest thing I can say about him is he’s a political hack with an over-inflated ego.”

“Torridjoe,” who himself (sarcastically) describes his low-traffic blog as “Tumble Weed Hotel,” works for the City of Portland, and shamelessly defends every cockamamie scheme his bosses on city council come up with, on pretty much every blog in town that dares question them (including this one, and my other one).

Both these guys are mainstream party guys, actively trading in access and influence (or trying to), and they both like to assert their political relevance. It’s pretty funny to see them mud wrestling about the minutiae of health care policy. Especially when it starts getting personal.

Torridjoe: “…I’m sure it’s jarring to step away from Blue Oregon and visit blogs that don’t blindly and vacantly cheer for the Democratic brand no matter way [sic].”

(Much kvetching about the details of various “public option” health care plans, none of which would do what only single payer can do: cover everybody for less money than we spend today.)

Chisholm: “Off-topic, but absolutely fascinating: Since October 29, when you posted the above comment, there’s been exactly two comments on all of Loaded Orygun. Some ‘community’ you’ve got going.”

Torridjoe: “you’re kind of a condescending dick, aren’t you? At least, your ‘my blog’s dick is bigger than yours’ barb at the end of your comment would suggest so. It sure would be nice to have my business subsidize my blog project like yours does (not so nice to have my blog topics beholden to keeping my business as yours is, but I guess that’s the price you pay), but those of us who have to squeeze in time on it at the end of all other responsibilities are not blessed with that luxury. In any case, I think I’d prefer a few rational comments to the stream of idiocy often prevalent at BlueO. But hey, thanks for slumming down at the Tumbleweed Hotel with us.”

Delicious!

Footnote: what’s a kook fight?

Back in the days of USENET (if you don’t know, don’t ask), I used to enjoy trolling the alt.paranormal groups for entertainment. There would always be a cadre of remarkably credulous and humor-challenged “kooks,” who, when not defending their absurd beliefs against the “kook hunters,” would occasionally get into arguments amongst themselves. That’s a “kook fight.” There were also “kook reach-arounds,” wherein they’d give props to one another and circle the wagons against their detractors. (You could probably find a torridjoe/Kari Chisholm reach around if you searched hard enough.)

All good fun while waiting for compiles to complete at work. Not much substance, but it’s all archived at Google, for what it’s worth (i.e. nothing).

Oh, er, shit, does this make me a condescending dick?

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They don’t make TV like this anymore.

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From LuLu, our little “parlor panther.”

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