Baseball and Steroids

With all of the talk going on about baseball and steroids, I feel a need to express my opinion.

There is and always will be one person responsible for taking steroids and that is the player. Everyone keeps wanting to say that it’s the league’s fault, it the owner’s fault, it’s the union’s fault… that’s a bunch of crap. Unless players were strapped down to tables and forced to take injections, the fault falls no further than the player.

A player must make a conscious decision to take a performance enhancing substance… it’s not something you accidentally do.

Did the league and union screw up by not testing it for drugs appropriately? Most definitely. It is just silly though to turn that into it being the league’s fault for not having rules preventing cheating. If you gave any of the cheaters truth serum, they would all admit that they were cheating and looking for an unnatural competitive advantage – there are no two ways about it.

Just because there are no laws on the books saying that I am not explicitly allowed to drill a hole in my head, that doesn’t give me the go-ahead to do it. If I go and do it, can I then blame the government for not preventing me from doing it?

The fault for taking steroids falls squarely with the players. The fault for allowing it to become such a widespread problem – everyone (mostly the players and the union).

Ubuntu Working Well on Laptop

My “old” laptop feels new again. Ubuntu has given it new life. I’ve been trying my best to use it for anything that I don’t explicitly need Windows for and the list is growing. I’m using it right now making my posts while I’m listening to music from my library.

I got Banshee working for library management and I mounted the server locally using smbmount so that I could access the music and pictures as if they existed directly on the laptop. That seems to be the ticket. I got Picasa up and running managing the pictures right from the mount point and banshee was able to import my music library and that is all working well.

I tried plugging my iPod Shuffle in and it showed up on my desktop, however, for some unknown reason, it’s not appearing in Banshee. I’ll have to look at this because it would be nice to be able to manage the iPods from this laptop as well. For the time being, it’s no big deal as I’m able to work with the iPods from my primary laptop which is running Windows Vista.

Another New Theme

It’s short-attention-theater time. I’ve decided to switch themes again. I kicked around a few others, but I’ll try this one for a couple of weeks and see how it works.

Linux on Children’s Computer

I got fed up with having to constantly “fix” the kids computer in their room. They were constantly installing software, toolbars and other “helper” applications that were causing the computer to not run well. Plus the updates were non-stop — especially since were weren’t allowing them on the Internet during the week… all updates were being done when they finally connected to the Internet on the weekend.

With Ubuntu installed, they can still run all of their online games (Runescape and Andkon) as well as some Linux games that will keep them relatively entertained. They can do any type of wordprocessing that they need using OpenOffice. They can connect to the music library using Rythmbox and DAAP and they can view any videos that then need.

The boot-up time is under a minute (compared to over 5 minutes with XP) and everything is working well. The only limitation is currently the system will not hibernate or suspend well, since the boot-up time is so short, it shouldn’t be an issue.

Converting to Linux

Well, not completely, but as much as possible, I am converting to Ubuntu Linux. I’ve switched a server at work, a workstation at work, a laptop at home and next is the kids’ computer in their room. I have just become tired of the slowness and all the additional crud installed on Windows boxes. Especially those boxes that are ust used for browsing and basic word processing.

The laptop I’m posting this from is now running Ubuntu. It’s an older laptop that just wasn’t running Vista well, it was slow and problematic. Now, with Ubuntu, it’s running quickly and doing everything that I need a laptop to do. I still have the laptop that handles the finances (both home and Little League) and that will need to be Windows based for some time, but for this laptop, it made sense.

I can connect to my music library and listen on demand (using DAAP) with no issues and I can browse, email, word process and develop as desired… it’s essentially my play laptop — all quickly with no issues. I’ve been amazed at how easy this has been. I’ve even connected my cameras (both still and video) with no issues… it even transfers files quicker on this platform.

I’m a little concerned about the kids computer since it is even older and it connects to our wireless via a wireless USB adapter. I guess I’ll know by the end of the day today.

Cheap Trick Live at Harrah’s

Andrew and I went to see Cheap Trick at Harrah’s last night. I saw them last year at the TLA in Philly along with OK Go and it was a great time. Andrew has been mentioning that he would be interested in going to see them, so when tickets went on sale, I got some as part of Andrew’s Christmas gift.

We were in the Penthouse area – sounds nice, but it was pretty far from the stage. We had a good view, however since we were above the stage. The sound was good, although not as good as if we would have been down at floor level… but probably best since it was Andrew’s first concert.

They sounded great… still anchored by Bun E. on drums and Tom Petersen on bass – who are the highlight for me. Robin was in good voice. There were only one or two songs that he has adjusted a little to stay within his range. They played all the hits you would expect. Plus, they rolled out one of my favorites “Heaven Tonight” – and did it justice and they dusted off “Don’t Be Cruel” which sounded great as well.

My only real complaint was the length of the show. They started promptly at 9:00 and they wrapped up their encore by 10:19. I was expecting a little more.

Andrew had a blast though and I must say that I think it was a great first concert to see.

Sorry Dear… Couldn’t Do It

After working for about 2 months with the theme that my wife considers “acceptably un-boring”, I just can’t do it any longer. It was driving me nuts… too many moving parts. I like simple and clean, maybe because I’m simple.

The new theme Librio is clean, neat and a soothing color combination allowing for easy reading and navigation. The new theme is me… boring and all.

Dogs Playing in the Snow

We’ll see if this works, it is the first video that I’ve posted. Daisy is enjoying the snow and Geddy is just plain afraid again… no surprise there. I wasn’t able to post it directly… I’ll have to look into that, but here is a link.

Daisy and Geddy Playing

Let it snow… let it snow… let it snow…

We awoke to a considerable amount of snow this morning (for South Jersey anyway). While the kids have shown no interest in playing in it, it is quite beautiful.

It was very light and easy to shovel, but it is getting pretty cold out. The kid’s school was cancelled, so I stayed home.

Daisy really liked playing in the snow… Geddy wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic. I will post video when it is done converting. I’m not sure if Geddy was afraid of the snow or the video camera, you just never know with him.