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Yet another movie based on a story by Phillip K. Dick. Nicolas Cage stars as a man that can see into the future. The catch, he can only see up to two minutes ahead. The movie is fast paced and action filled. Cage’s character, Cris Johnson, is sought by the FBI to assist them finding a nuclear bomb in southern California. This is a chase movie. If you liked the Fugitive then this movie is worth a look.

The movie is rated PG-13. I think it could have qualified for an R with a little less editing. Because Johnson (Cage) can see into the future, there are lots of “what if” scenes. Many of these are explosions and people getting shot. ** Spoiler alert ** One scene involves his love interest being strapped into a wheelchair wearing a bomb that is exploded by terrorists. This scene is very disturbing. My wife cried. Much of the movie is devoted to preventing this possible future.

Cage is better in this film than in Ghost Rider. He is likable and the opening scenes in the movie create believability in his power that makes the whole premise work. Unlike the television show Heroes, the directors are not trying to misdirect you as each possible future is explored. They simply show you the possible choices and consequences of each. While you are waiting for the lines to Spiderman to get shorter, consider this film to be your Next.

Gene Robinson Marriage Assaulted

Gene Robinson, the homosexual Episcopal minister whose elevation to Bishop has been the fulcrum of the irreconcilable split in the worldwide Anglican Communion, has found yet another way to throw more fuel on the ecclesiastical pyre of the American church.  Robinson is the bishop of New Hampshire. New Hampshire is in the final stages of enacting a civil union law and Robinson wants to be first in line.

What I find curious is the quotes used from Robinson in the news stories about this issue. Robinson equates this civil union law with state recognition of gay marriage. He views this as a step toward forcing the federal government into recognizing gay marriage.

I think this is a huge leap forward, but it is not full equality until we have equality. The biggest piece missing, of course, is federal recognition. I don’t think it will happen until we get several more states. It doesn’t have to be a majority, but it has to be a significant number embracing full marriage rights until we can expect that at the federal level. We are only arguing over a timetable.

According to my understanding of this issue—and a cursory review of the issue on the Internet seems to confirm —civil unions and domestic partnership laws are two roughly equivalent ways used by states to create a legal means of granting the same rights to homosexuals that married couples enjoy. This is done on a state-by-state basis without federal recognition.  The above quote from Robinson seems to support this interpretation.

My question then is this; if civil unions and domestic partner recognition grant the same rights that states confer on married couples why is there such a push here in California to allow homosexuals to call themselves “married”? Marriage is defined in state law as the union of one man and one woman. This has been the definition of the term for the last two thousand years here in the West. Why must it be redefined now?

Marriage is one of three institutions created by God. The three are: government, church and family (marriage). The first miracle of Jesus was at a marriage. The relationship of Christ to the church is explained as the relationship of a groom to his bride. I submit that the assault on marriage by the state and some in the church is nothing short of an attack on God. It is a form of open rebellion by sinful men. No one can harm God so they take out their hatred of him by harming those that bear his image. Murder, abortion, homosexuality are all examples of this evil.

Anything that diminishes marriage undermines those institutions established by God for our benefit. The fact that a leader charged with defending Christ’s Church is a leading advocate for the destruction of both the institution of marriage and the Church charged with protecting it just heaps greater judgment upon him.

Rosie Gets News Job

Rosie O’Donnell is leaving “The View.” She has been unable to come to terms with ABC. Rumor has it that she will be moving to CBS to take the slot currently held by Katie Couric.

Veteran CBS reporter and former news anchor Dan Rather praised the move, “Rosie is like a bulldog. She will follow a story wherever it takes her and leave no Bush unwatered. She has good instincts and knows that the Catholics and Republicans are the cause of all our country’s ills. Her pursuit of the truth will put CBS on the cutting edge of journalism and bring a dignity to CBS News that it has been lacking since my retirement. She will be an excellent replacement as news anchor.”

wink

Premature Baby Discarded on Sidewalk

From the most Liberal city in America comes the story of the woman had the baby on the street corner and without so much as a second thought, she left him alive right where he came out and continued walking down the street.

(AP) SAN FRANCISCO A woman who allegedly walked away from her baby boy after giving birth to him on a street corner was arrested on suspicion of child endangerment, police said.

Police found the mother two blocks away Sunday night after a security guard spotted her delivering the baby and called 911, police Capt. Al Casciato said.

“She denied having a baby, but her clothing was soaked in blood,” Casciato said.

The 5-pound, 12-ounce baby boy was taken to San Francisco General Hospital and placed in the custody of Child Protective Services.

Police had to restrain the woman who appeared to be suffering from mental illness, Casciato said.

Republican Chair Caught Stealing

Finally this has gone public. Our local Republican Central Committee has been covering this up for several months. It’s unfortunate that the liberal media has to break the story because we can’t police ourselves.

The local Chair of the county party helped herself to over $35,000 and others in the party covered it up. The story can be found at Sacramento Bee Newspaper (registration is required).

The resignation of former Sacramento County Republican Party Chairwoman Donna Schalansky has become the flash point in an internal party battle that centers on whether thousands of dollars of reimbursements she received were in violation of state law.

State law requires information about “third-party payees” be disclosed for reimbursements of $500 or more. But financial disclosure forms filed with the secretary of state’s office show Schalansky received 29 payments of $500 or more—a total of $35,922—between 2003 and 2006 without receipts showing who received the payments for which she was reimbursed.

Thus far no audit has been done and none is schedule. Members are not being allowed to see the books and no complete treasurer reports are being given out at the meeting. I have it on good authority that others are involved and that this may involve the state party as well.

Virginia Tech Questions

There are many questions that remain unanswered about the shooting yesterday at Virginia Tech. Trying to find a rational motive is not among them.

What proof is there that both campus shootings are related?
Why did we know who most of the 9/11 hijackers were before the towers fell and it took over 24 hours before any information was released about the shooter?
Why did nobody fight this guy or try to stop him? (Todd Beamer and the American Spirit must not be lived or taught at this school.)
Isn’t it remarkable that even when reloading no one tried to stop him?
Where were the police?
Why doesn’t anyone bring up Beslan when talking about the number of dead and wounded? (F.Y.I. Beslan had over ten times as many dead)
Why is the only answer offered by Liberals to disarm the innocent and make it even harder to fight back?

Hitler in Springtime

Earth Day is the pagans’ alternative to the Christian celebration of Easter. In fact I call it Pagan Holy Week. The environmental religion of “Mother Earth” is probably at its greatest peak of popularity since the early days of Saint Patrick.

As part of this rise in worshipping the creation instead of the Creator, adherents to this viewpoint are trying to reexamine history to gauge the impact of mankind on their blessed deity. The newest revision of history in light of the supremacy of the environment is a tome called “How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment and Nation in the Third Reich.”

It is available from http://www.Amazon.com. The books’ description reads in part:

The Nazis created nature preserves, contemplated sustainable forestry, curbed air pollution, and designed the autobahn highway network as a way of bringing Germans closer to nature. How Green Were the Nazis? is the first book to examine the ideology and practice of environmental protection in Nazi Germany. Environmentalists and conservationists in Germany welcomed the rise of the Nazi regime with open arms, for the most part, and hoped that it would bring about legal and institutional changes.

This sounds like a candidate for http://www.snopes.com but the book appears to be genuine.

Alex Beam, a writer for the Boston Globe, has written a review of the book with all the seriousness that such a topic richly deserves.

It is undeniably true that Adolf and his crew were A-number-one landscape-impacters. London got plenty impacted by the Nazis’ environmental outreach program, as did cities like Leningrad, Stalingrad, Dresden, and Berlin. According to this book, the Nazis had big plans for spreading their green ideology eastward into Poland, Ukraine, and Russia. “In the vast territories conquered in the east . . . they saw the opportunity to create a better, greener, future, combining racist and environmental thinking,” the authors write. How sad that the eastern European Jews didn’t go along with the program! What soreheads.

It’s incredible that anyone would actually publish sentences like these: “The Nazis, however, were not interested in turning Germany into a tree farm”; “World War II was the opportunity that many modernist landscape architects had been waiting for”; or, “In the end, everyone . . . agreed that it was the wrong moment to embark on any projects with organic farming.”

Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.

To be fair, I did learn a lot. I already knew that Hitler was a vegetarian with a taste for nonalcoholic beer, but I didn’t know that SS boss Heinrich Himmler also eschewed meat or that Hermann Goering had a “sincere interest in forest conservation.” Nazi party secretary Rudolf Hess was a devotee of organic gardening. Did you know that there was an organic herb garden at Dachau? Marvelous! It’s depressing how many historians insist on dwelling on the negatives.

Read his article for yourself A silent springtime for Hitler?
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2007/04/11/a_silent_springtime_for_hitler/

Oh, for those for you that don’t see the humor in the title it is a combination of the fictional play Springtime for Hitler from Mel Brooks’ Producers and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, one of the first environmental propaganda books.

Thanks Dean Barnett for bring this to my attention.

Microsoft Update Creates Error

Last week I loaded the April 3 Security Update from Microsoft onto my work computer.
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/update/bulletins/200704OOB.mspx

This update was marked as Critical and was released early just to get it in circulation. Unfortunately it created a .dll conflict error.

RTHDCPL.EXE – Illegal System DLL Relocation
The system DLL user32.dll was relocated in memory. The application will not run properly. The relocation occurred because the DLL C:\system32\HHCTRL.OXC occupied an address range reserved for Windows system DLLs. The vendor supplying the DLL should be contacted for a new DLL.

In all my years of computing I have never before seen that error. I restored my system to an earlier date and again loaded the update with the same results. I searched in vain on the Microsoft website to find an explanation for this error. While the computer seemed to perform correctly, I wanted to be sure my system was ok.

I looked up all the .dll files mentioned in the error message and found that the one triggering the error was a RealTek audio driver. I went to the RealTek site and downloaded their HD audio update and I no longer get the error message.

Why there was conflict between Microsoft and RealTek I don’t know but I hope the security update was really that important.

UPDATE
After this blog was posted, Microsoft released a patch.

Update for Windows XP (KB935448)
Date last published: 4/10/2007
Download size: 702 KB
Install this update to resolve an issue where certain third-party applications may not start, and you receive an error message: “Illegal System DLL Relocation” after you install security update KB925902 (MS07-017). After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

Tom Sullivan Rights Wrong

In the early AM hours of the morning, Sou Saechinn was getting ready for work when he heard something outside. He looked out the window, and saw three people trying to break into his car. Saechinn came out side shot at the trio, hitting one in the chest.

Local business man and talkshow host Tom Sullivan posted bond for Mr. Saechinn.
Thanks Tom Sullivan for helping a man protect his family and property. (see link below for story)
http://cbs13.com/topstories/local_story_095004945.html

If I caught a person in my yard trying to steal my car, I would shoot him too.

I have been a victim of auto theft and auto burglary. This kind of crime is an assault upon my family and myself. Besides the sense of violation that you go through after being attacked on your private property, it is also an assault upon your economic livelihood. Without a car, you can’t get to work. If you can’t work, you can’t take care of your family.

Furthermore, the police won’t do anything. All they do is arrest a man for doing the job the police refuse to do. Protecting his life and property. That’s criminal!

According to our legal system, what the man should have done instead of shooting the thief is force the thieves to drink lots of water and if they should die we know they won’t press charges. http://cbs13.com/local/local_story_092204031.html

Mr. Saechinn’s act of self-defense is Constitutional under the Second Amendment. If you want a case to argue Original Intent this is the one. Furthermore, this action is justified on biblical grounds. The criminals not only violated the prohibition on stealing but also the injunction on coveting.

The Tenth Commandment reads

THOU shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

For those of you who went to public school, the “ox” is a reference to a man’s job and his “ass” is the mode of transportation that a person owns.

I predict that ultimately Mr. Saechinn will not face any charges due to the public outrage at the police department’s stupid reaction.

My Vista Box

Well I finally got my new computer up and running. I wanted a machine that was fast with lots of storage and room to grow. I think I have achieved that and more.

Unlike the strawman arguments found in the Apple advertisements where the PC is prepping for surgery to upgrade to Vista, I wanted a system made to use the new OS as it was supposed to operate.

Just a comment, I do find the hypocrisy of Apple in their ad campaign intolerable. Back when Apple had their own operating system—before they junked it and went to a Unix-based OS and Intel CPU chips—I tried one of their computers. After a short time I gave it away to a friend that wanted an Apple system. Their Soviet-style business model stinks and their computers are overrated. Clearly viewers of Oprah and AOL users are the target market for their computers.

If you want a more neutral evaluation of your computer’s ability to run Vista, run the Vista Upgrade Advisor tool at http://www.cnet.com/4520-33_1-6671810-1.html

Anyway, I went to tech nerd heaven a.k.a. Fry’s Electronics and purchased the following:
AMD dual core processor 5,000 MHz
2 GB 800 MHz RAM
Gigabyte GA-M59SLI-S5 Motherboard
Three 500 GB SATA II Hard-drives in RAID 5 Array
Antec 900 Mid-Tower Case for Gamers
Striker 600 Watt Power Supply
Nvidia 8800 SLI video card with 640 MB RAM

The Gigabyte motherboard was actually the second motherboard I tried for this system. Originally I had purchased an Abit Fatal1ty board but it would not work correctly so I took it back. The Abit board was very frustrating, I don’t know if it was the board or the Kingston RAM but the machine would randomly lock-up at various points in the start-up sequence, even when making changes to the BIOS. In addition, I could never successfully format the RAID 5 drive. I tried Windows XP Professional, Home and Professional x64 and none would install.

The only way to get an operating system installed was to break the RAID 5 apart and install on a single drive. But still there were random lock-ups.

The Gigabyte board worked perfectly the first time. Getting past the two hour step on formatting the hard-drive was concerning but the rest of the process went quite rapidly.
After installing to OS, which ended up being Windows XP Professional x64, I installed the drives from the motherboard DVD and ran Windows Update. After just four downloads the system was up to date. One of the updates was Service Pack 2 with an impressive 351 MB download; but at 2 a.m., that was a rapid download.

It took over five hours to transfer my music, photos and video files to the new computer via our home network. The 10/100 hub got quite a workout. I haven’t verified to transfer size yet but it was probably in excess of 250 GBs.

I still have some more preps to do to the system before I finally get Vista installed.

I went to the HP website and downloaded drivers. I found that my replacement Photosmart printer had drivers but my nice scanner was no longer supported. HP had a note where my scanner driver should be located informing me that my device must be more that seven years old and therefore is no longer supported. My HP Scanjet 6200c is a business quality scanner that connects via USB cable. It seems such a shame to part with it.

On a brighter note, I have found something to replace my Computer Associates anti-virus product. I bought the CA virus program because it is supposed to work on Windows XP Professional x64. It does seem to work except that it won’t scan incoming e-mail, which is probably the most vulnerable access point to my computer and the most likely avenue of attack.

It appears that the Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0 will work on 64-bit versions of Vista and XP. It is less of a performance hit than Symantec or CA products. I was impressed that Kaspersky found two Trojans and another virus in my e-mail that were not detected by the CA anti-virus program. The Trojans were from spam while my friend that uses exclusively Apple products sent the other virus. The program made a great first impression. http://usa.kaspersky.com/products/internet-security.php

In order to keep my computer running properly, I will need to get the new version of Diskeeper to keep my drives defragmented and running their best. Since my Raid 5 array is more than 768 MB, I need the Diskeeper Professional Premier edition. http://www.diskeeper.com/defrag.asp

Thankfully, both Kaspersky and Diskeeper have demo programs that I can test drive on my Vista OS.

Lastly, I have decided to switch which version of Vista that I will be installing. I had planned to install Windows Vista Ultimate but I have decided to purchase Windows Vista Home Premier. The only difference seems to be features that I will not need.