funny old men, guns

I run a cafe of sorts in a health club for my "day job." In my days, I take a lot of abuse from the old men that come and "workout" and then sit and drink coffee for an hour. The conversations range from politics and sports to history and current events. One of them stood up this morning and said, "Well, I suppose I should actually work out this morning!" Steve, another regular, said, "What?!?! I've been workin' hard for a good ten-fifteen minutes!" The banter makes my mornings worthwhile working here.

I don't know if I've expressed my opinion for the news in this blog so I thought that DC vs Heller would be a good place to open. For those not in the know, the District of Columbia vs Heller is the court case that went to the Supreme Court over the right to have a gun in Washington DC. Now, there has been a ban on firearm possession there for some time.

Now, I read the news when I have time or just find a minute between hazings of the old men! I also try to keep up generally on how the stock market is doing and why. I also try to read several different "publications" as well. The reason I do this is because it is difficult to find any "news" source that isn't skewed and is completely objective. I have to kind of giggle at Fox News' "Fair and balanced" stories. Then I outwardly laugh at when a liberal tears at that same thing for the reason that they support the news from CNN or MSNBC. I'm rather blown away that so many people will only watch one of them. I'm not a whole lot better, but I try by reading the Economist, BBC, and once in a while the Guardian as well as the American news sources. I really have a solid disdain for the American news. I'm sure that there are a lot of good people working for these companies. But it's hard to believe everything they say and take it word for word. It's like bashing President Bush. I know a lot of people do it and that's fine. One thing I love about this country is that we have freedom of speech. We can rip on anyone for any reason. There are laws against libel, etc. However, if we disagree with someone, we are free to express that. SO! If you don't like Bush, cool! But WHY do you not like Bush? Is it because he is trying to assist a country in turmoil? Is it because he has used the veto power only on a few rare times? Is it because of his economic policy? I have no problem if you don't like him. Personally, I think there are better leaders. But I have reasons for not liking him. SPECIFIC reasons. I don't bash him because of his imperfect grammar/word usage.

Now that I've said that. DC vs Heller was a pretty controversial court case. It is yet another example of the fundamental idea of the right to own a specific type of weapon as a normal citizen (as opposed to a police officer or military). I think that this is an interesting debate and it really comes down to how comfortable you are personally with a gun.

I grew up in small-town, Wyoming. The state has battled with Alaska for last place on the population list for decades and is recently losing by a good margin as I understand it. It is a land of farmers and ranchers. There are plenty of cowboys around. As a result, livestock theft can be a problem at times. There are people who actually defend their cattle, etc with a shotgun! Even today, this really does happen. To most of the city-bound population, this seems crazy. Imagine making $200/cow each year. At a rate of50-200 cows a year, that isn't much when you have to support a family and farm equipment. Now, $200/cow is on the low side I believe and 100 cows is probably only a bit below the average. But trying to take care of two or three kids on $25k/year is anything but rare. Try stealing $1,000 from a man who works the ground and see what happens! If you avoid prison, you will be lucky.

Now, to flip into the city and ask the same question.... Give a man a responsibility and say nothing to him of leadership and you will have a child with power. This is where that phrase about power and corruption comes from. Give a child a country and you will get a ruthless dictator. Fill that country with children and you will have civil war. Try to take that country back and you are France! Back on point, I really believe that education is the answer.

I've shot guns, even as a kid. I'm certainly not afraid of them. I suspect many city goers are. The only time they see them are when they see law enforcement or someone who is in a gang or the mob. That's not very encouraging to me. I believe that given some good gun safety classes for the general public, things will not be so anti-gun/gun-control oriented in the future. We have the 2nd Amendment for a reason. I believe in that reason.

FOSS

FOSS is an awesome philosophy that I inherently disdain, but in this particular field, I'm down with it! Free Open-Source Software is three parts. Free is self defining and most people know what Software is too. Open-source is a little foreign to most though. Every program, every script, every operating system (including windows) has what is called in the developer world "source code." It is the basic code that the programmers write each day at their jobs as they work towards whatever it is they are developing for their company. Linux is based on this philosophy.

Now, I am a libertarian. I'm a big believer in as much limitation of government as possible, privitization of as much of society as possible, and as much individual rights and ownership as possible. This is something of an paradox for me. For the reason of furthering technology in society, I applaud and support the idea.

"But, but but..???" I hear that WAY too much. "You can't do Microsoft!" is one that I hear often as well. The truth is you can. I ask why you would want to and that seems to get people confused. At that point, I try to explain a little bit of this blog. I'm not sure why, but people are so hesitant to change that they want to blindly defend Windows. I don't mind too much if someone wants to run windows. I really don't! I went Microsoft free for a while with success. I now run one windows box simply because a couple pieces of software that I consider essential were written natively in the windows environment. The box is scaled WAY down to run a simple and secure workstation. I run about 4 programs, one of which does NOT run off of the Linux box. The network environment is mixed and runs perfectly fine. But I would encourage you to
try Ubuntu or Fedora at the very least for a month and see how you like it. It's different, yes. But there is a joke among Linux developers - "You're running into virus problems? What's a Virus?"

Here's the inspiration: http://conversasdobruno.blogs.sapo.pt/372067.html

FINANCE!!!

I'm working on a simple and easy to understand financial post, but I've gotta get a graphic done before I post it. (It will make things a lot easier.)

Political Philosophy

I had a cool experience listening to a rant from a weird guy from Canadia the other day. It helped me define some of my own political views. It was funny listening to him talk, but at the same time it was refreshing to hear some rationale behind his, in some cases VERY, different views on how to deal with the system and fixing it.

It seems to me like there are a few fundamental things that each society needs from some form of government. It is in the way that you would approach those needs and build solutions and applications for your society that really define your political views.
From my view, the fundamentals are as follows...
Freedoms that are decided by the citizens as they believe that they deserve.
Some sort of protection from outside invaders, e.g. pirates, dictators, other countries that think they need to own your country (UK, France, China come to mind).
A currency that is common for the country as a whole and not 50 bazillion different currencies.
And last but not least is a way to support the economy and tax it within reason, e.g. health care, education, grants, etc.

The way that you look at implementing those things (and I probably missed something) into a culture are what make up political philosophies.

Inspired

Once again, I've been given much. Two of the people I respect most in this town in his own regard have given me a huge compliment. It is really inspiring to me. My wonderful girlfriend just concurred with them.
The next couple of weeks to a month will be a lot of work for me. But I can do it. I'm planning a trip out in July. It's on like Donkey Kong!

victory

yesterday was a big day in several ways. I would say the highlight happened last night. My bro came climbing with my girlfriend. I had a private lesson to teach. It was an intro to lead climbing. So we went over clipping, rope management, blah blah blah. They were fine and knew most of it already. After I finished, Heather asked if I wanted to climb. I was still a bit sore from Tuesday bouldering, but I wanted to do something. I figured I'd take a lap out the roof and call it good. The lead ropes were all out and most of them in use. Grrr. Whatever, I'll make a lap on my project and call that good. Well, no more 1-fall. Orange project [x]. Needless to say, I went home and had some IPA. Tasted so good.

turmoil

4-8-08
It seems to me like there is a lot of tough times going on around me. Friends with relationship problems are struggling. Fears over brothers going into the military are heavy. Of course finances are part of the heartache as well. I feel a lot of attacks happening to those around me and to myself as well.
I went bouldering last night. I know I know, call Guinness right? It was hard, but it was also a bit relieving. All I had to do to complete a task was to figure it out. Each problem was easy to see. Even if I didn't take the time to fully understand everything, things were straight-forward. I'm tired today. I'm tired from staying up to listen to a friend rant for an hour over a brew. I find it a bit sad when you can find solace only in a bar when people you know are there. He could not find peace in his own place. I love people and I really enjoy beer, but that is not my only shelter.
One of my good friends just lost what would have been his first grandson. That was yesterday. Now he CAN find shelter in his house, but the attacks don't seem to be stopping. I wonder why.

I've learned a lot in the past couple of months. I feel like God is making me more of a man through this. Not only am I struggling, but my friends are being destroyed as well. Two people know of the attack on me. It will remain two for a while. I don't know why, but I feel that I have more character if I don't share it. I know there is a balance to be struck. I can't live life doing everything on my own. No one can.