Mele Kalikimaka!

2:6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

2:7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

2:8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

2:9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

2:10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

2:11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

2:12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

2:13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, 2:14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Instagram Widget Added

You may have noticed a link to my latest Instagram photo over in the right column. Feel free to click on it to view the photo and then take a look at the rest of my gallery.  I’m spending more time on Instagram than my blog so you might find it interesting to take a look at my gallery. Thanks!

Aloha ~ Dan

Cringley: “The Decline and Fall of IBM”

If your IT is based on IBM hardware and/or applications you should read this book.

The link includes the Introduction from the book so you can decide whether it is worth $3.99 for almost 300 pages on what is really going on in IBM and, perhaps, whether you should be entrusting your livelihood to them.

Cover of “The Decline and Fall of IBM”

Not so Snowy

For the first time, I’ve had problems with making an online purchase. For the past couple of days, I’ve been going to the Island Snow website, a local company located in beautiful Kailua, that sells, among other things, some cool t-shirts, to order some.

But three or four times, after filling out the online order form their credit card processing company rejected my order due to a problem with my address. What problem I don’t know. I do know, from checking my credit card website, that the money part of the transaction is fine because the credit card company is showing multiple temporary holds in the amounts for the shirts I wanted to order.

So I contacted Island Snow and I got a nice email reply saying they’ve had to make changes because of the high number of fraudulent purchases. While I fully understand that identity theft is a booming and growing business, having been a victim of such theft twice, I still don’t know what the problem is and how to solve it.

So, it appears I will have to do this partly over the phone and partly via email. Sigh. The quality of life is starting to go down hill because of all these people stealing what is not theirs.

What’s Still Missing in iOS8?

Multitasking. In 2014. Apple still can’t figure out multitasking. And no, I’m not talking about switching from one app to another. I’m talking about MULTIPLE apps running AT THE SAME TIME.  Preferably visible at the same time in, now wait for it, windows.

Welcome!

Welcome to everyone coming from fellow Daynoter Brian Bibrey’s site. Brian’s link to my humble neck of the Internet is much appreciate.

A friendly note to all who come here, this site began along time ago in a different format and covered whatever fancied my attention at the time. Now, it is focused on religious issues, especially those relevant as the history of this world draws to a close. Hence, if you are offended by such posts, please read no further.

For those continuing, my site switched from hard coded HTML to using WordPress. The site lost a lot in the translation but such is life, sometimes. So much of the early posts are gone, at least temporarily.

Some of the earlier posts still survive back on my seto.org site but I have yet to sort them out and link them to a page where Google can get to them. Be assured I will get aroundtoit Real Soon Now. By the way, I have some HOT beach front property on the Big Island that keeps on getting bigger, for sale. That, along with the Brooklyn Bridge would make a great graduation gift. [see that there? That’s called a joke. I did that a lot. Perhaps too much…]

Anyway, thanks for stopping by!

Aloha ~ Dan

Surfing the Wind

Yesterday, on the way home from work, we were on the highway in the left lane when a surfboard on the roof of a black BMW one lane over came loose and flew towards and over our car. We were probably doing close to 60 mph and the BMW was going even faster so I reckon the board was going pretty fast too. It missed us by maybe a foot. Praise God from whom all blessing flow that we were not killed or seriously injured.

Dell Optiplex 760 Internal Speaker and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx)

Due to overwhelming demand (OK, one person), I’ve decided to post something.

I’ve been using a version of Linux as my main desktop OS for maybe five or ten years now. Although Linux, speaking generically about the various distributions, has made progress on many fronts, it can still be a pain when it comes to peripherals (e.g., audio, video, cameras, iphones, scanners, etc.).

Today, I am (again, long story) creating a tutorial on getting the internal speaker working on my Dell OptiPlex 760. I need to create this so I can remind myself what I’ve already learned a couple of times now.

I’m using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, also known as Lucid Lynx. These instructions probably won’t work if you are using another version of Ubuntu (Editorial comment: because of how they, seemingly, randomly change applications and configurations).

In any case, the Dell PC has an internal speaker that no version of Ubuntu I’ve tried defaults to using. I can plug in external speakers or a headphones and hear the sound fine. But the internal speaker is not enabled, and as far as I can see, unless you add some software or find the right configuration file/command line instructions, you can’t enable it.

So, this tutorial is to remind myself how to do so. Before I go farther, please insert the standard disclaimer here. This entire site is provided “as is”, without any warranty whatsoever. Following these instructions may cause high fever, dandruff, and/or the complete loss of all data on your device – not to mention Thermal Nuclear War.

1. System –> Administration –> Synaptic Package Manager
2. Type in your password then use the “Quick search” box to find gnome-alsamixer.
3. Mark it for installation and Apply the change.
4. Applications –> Sound & Video –> GNOME ALSA mixer
5. Check if “Beep”, “IEC958”, or “Mono” are “Muted” (i.e., the little box at the bottom of the columns for each of the categories is checked). If any are muted, unmute each one and test your sound. How you test your sound is a task left to you, dear reader. If all else fails, unmute all sources on the mixer. If that fails, check the Master level to ensure it’s not set to zero (i.e., at the bottom of its slider). Done. At least, it works for me.

Audi Progress Is…

Twitter friend @johngarcia is a second round @Audi http://www.voteforprogress.org/ contender. Audi will donate $25,000 to charity as part of the winning prize.

#DeskDiary
#ProgressIs

 Help John here: http://hnl.me/voteprogress

See the other entrants at http://commercials.audius.com/audiprogressis

Timid Souls

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

US President Theodore Roosevelt
“Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910