Photography update
I’m working on my photography site, trying to get it to integrate with this blog. I’m having limited success with Lightbox, as usual.
Choosing between Kindle and Nook
This is my first post from an iPhone. I didn’t think I’d ever do this type of blogging but what the heck. Malleable is good. Availability maybe not so much.
Do I want a Kindle or do I want a Nook? Barnes and Noble seems to be making a great entry into the field of e-readers. The Kindle has been around longer. The Nook looks like it takes all the best the Kindle has to offer and improves it slightly. The libraries of books available to both devices are huge. Prices of the books are similar. Both devices can download periodicals and other third party content. Neither of these devices really goes too far beyond being a good reader while stuck in an aluminium tube in the sky but they are worth getting to know. Chances are we’ll soon be using them to blog, twit, text and prepare keynote addresses. I wonder how many years it will be before I can dump all my devices in exchange for just one device – a connected everywhere all-in-one portable phone, entertainment, reading and storage device. Probably not that many.
The easy way to kill American soldiers
If you want to kill as many American soldiers as possible just attack them outside a “combat zone.” As a soldier and former marine, I’ve thought about this issue for many years because I am effectively deprived of my right to self-defense about 98% percent of the time I am in uniform. All it takes to slaughter American troops currently is a little willpower, access to weapons and enough intelligence to find troops on maneuvers around their home base anywhere inside the United States or anywhere outside a so-called combat zone. Just ask Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. He managed to kill 13 and wound 42 with two pistols inside the biggest Army base in the United States. And here you were thinking soldiers have guns. You were wrong. Soldiers mostly have paperwork these days.
Imagine what would happen if a professional cadre of determined aggressors armed with sniper rifles and the right training and experience actively started attacking the hundreds of unarmed military convoys that travel on U.S. highways daily. Just this weekend, I was traveling in such a convoy and I thought about exactly this scenario. We had rifles, to be sure. But they were locked up and we had no ammunition. My personal concealed carry pistol, an H&K .45 USP, is prohibited on base or when in the field even though I am a staff sergeant with combat experience. I carry this pistol every single day as a civilian and take my responsibility to defend my own life and the lives of those around me very seriously. The Army doesn’t believe in my right to defend the lives of myself and my fellow citizens. Except when a bureaucrat says it is OK, of course. The circumstances of my ability to engage an enemy with years of training are dictated by the faceless and the nameless. Men and women unknown to me decide whether I might live or die based in irrational criteria and flawed thinking.
A gun free zone is only gun free until someone ignores the rules and brings a gun into the so-called zone. There is no such thing as a safe zone. We live on a tiny little ball of matter spinning wildly through a universe filled with danger. That doesn’t mean we should live paranoid existences filled with wailing and gnashing of teeth. It does mean that we should encourage human beings to think. It means that we should understand our own infinitesimal fragility. It means that those of us who can should carry fire extinguishers, first aid kits, emergency food rations and guns and ammo at all times. These are basic survival tools and may be needed at the drop of a hat. No one locks up firefighters’ axes while they are off duty. That would be silly. Yet soldiers who are not actively engaged in security operations are deprived of weapons and ammunition. That makes our domestic military installations the biggest targets in United States. Sure, there are quick reaction forces. They are small and if there really were sleeper cells in the U.S. as we’ve been told it would be easy to attack and overwhelm these forces.
In the name of political correctness, we have murdered our own protectors by depriving them of their second amendment rights. This should shame us. The very people we train to protect us are disarmed by our own political class because of cowardice and mistrust. Do not give a man a gun if you do not trust him. Maybe you shouldn’t give him a uniform either. God didn’t design snakes with removable fangs for a reason. An Army that uses the motto “train as we fight” but disarms it soldiers the majority of the time might be broken. Is anyone going to step up and ask that we fix this? I am.
If you are a member of the “armed services” you should be armed. At all damn times. That way, when a psychopath is loose in your midst and is also armed, you don’t have to die running away from the danger.
How do we avoid another massacre such as the one perpetrated by Nidal Malik Hasan? We do the following:
- Encourage all officers and NCOs to carry loaded weapons at all times
- Train all uniformed servicemembers to respond to enemy shooters in domestic environments
- Begin training enlisted troops regarding the serious responsibilities they are being entrusted with (carrying a firearm at all times) beginning with basic training/boot camp – by the time they are NCOs 99.9% of them will be completely adjusted to the idea and comfortable with it
- Encourage retired military to be armed at all times wherever they are
- Create widespread awareness of these programs in the media
Ideas are always more powerful than weapons. Ideas kill people every single day on this planet. Bad ideas like gun free zones kill more people than they save. Stupid ideas like disarmed military population clusters are so asinine that I would quit the military if I didn’t need health insurance and supplemental retirement income to offset my huge tax burden, without which I could be paying for all the health care I need while saving for rainy days and my “golden years.” Thanks Congress. Thank you entrenched career busybodies in Washington, D.C. Thanks for nothing.
Sincerely,
An idealistic staff sergeant
P.S. If you think I’m just a nutjob read what other veterans and servicemembers are saying:
A painful learning process with Ubuntu, virtual servers and the inner workings of Wordpress
I have been keeping this blog since 2004. I’ve written well over 1,000 entries including a year of blogging from Baghdad, Iraq. This blog has become a combination diary, political screed and memory lane for me. Needless to say, I’ve been extremely irritated that the blog crashes every other day. I’ve switched hosting providers three times now trying to get the issue corrected. Finally, I decided enough was enough.
After countless hours of troubleshooting my conclusion was that CPanel on CentOS is what has been causing my Wordpress blog crashes.
I bit the bullet and created an Ubuntu virtual server using the LAMP stack at my hosting provider VPS.net. After two weeks of trial and error learning, I’ve migrated my entire blog from a CPanel managed environment to one where I am controlling everything using FTP (Filezilla) and SSH (putty).
I’ve had numerous problems with Apache mod_rewrite, setting up an FTP server from a command line and so on. For others who might be trying to setup and install their own Wordpress instance or migrate an existing Wordpress blog at the most basic levels, here are some links I think you may find useful.
Useful links for setting up or migrating Wordpress to an Ubuntu server
HOWTO : Create a FTP server with user access (proftpd) – Ubuntu Forums
How to set up a mail server on a GNU / Linux system
Migrate Wordpress to a new server or directory | Richard Castera
Moving WordPress « WordPress Codex
Editing wp-config.php « WordPress Codex
WordPress SuperCache-Plus plugin | The Murmatrons
Police officers should be held to a higher standard
Former Chattanooga police officer Kenneth Freeman should be in jail. Freeman has been re-fired by the Chattanooga City Council but that’s not enough. Police officers shouldn’t be held to a lower standard of conduct than private citizens, they should be held to a higher standard.
After five hours in front of the Chattanooga City Council, fired Chattanooga police officer Kenneth Freeman will stay that way. Fired.
First, a little history of Freeman’s story. Last summer, Freeman was relieved of his duties amid domestic assault allegations. Authorities told us then that they responded to a apartment complex on Mountain Creek Road. That’s where Rose Blanks told police that she and Freeman were arguing. That’s when she says Freeman threatened her.
He was fired in August after an Internal Affairs investigation into several different incidents. Police spokesperson Sgt. Jerry Weary said one of those incidents, “..alcohol was involved and he was found to have been carrying a firearm at the time which he consumed alcohol.” She said investigators at Internal Affairs were actually looking into two cases involving three violations of department policy and procedures. “One was for turning in overtime sheets for time he had not worked,” Sgt. Weary explained. Weary added that amounted to fraud, among other things. “And then the third was for conduct unbecoming,” Sgt. Weary said.
Peace officers should never be allowed to hide behind a badge, a department or a flag. An armed peace officer who shoves an old Wal-Mart greeter is not a professional, he is a criminal.
In one case, Officer Freeman was investigated for consuming alcohol while armed, carrying an unauthorized off-duty firearm and conformance to law. In the second case, he was investigated for insubordination and two complaints of conduct unbecoming an officer, police spokeswoman Sgt. Jerri Weary said in a news release.
Three complaints were sustained — consuming alcohol while armed, conduct unbecoming an officer relating to fraud by turning in hours not worked and carrying an unauthorized off-duty firearm, she said. His termination is effective immediately but he can appeal the decision to the Chattanooga City Council, Sgt. Weary said.
Officer Freeman served a 28-day suspension earlier this year after an internal affairs investigation that he exhibited conduct unbecoming an officer, improper procedure and excessive use of force in connection with an assault of a Wal-Mart greeter.
If I did all the things listed in bold, I would be going to jail. Kenneth Freeman got fired. That’s getting off easy. While I think it’s great that Mr. Freeman no longer has the ability to hide behind a uniform, gun and badge I believe he should be held to the same criminal penalties that I would be times two. If an armed police officers abuses his or her authority the penalty should be doubled. Frankly, I’d like to give Kenneth Freeman a good shove. He violated the trust placed in him by the citizens of Chattanooga acting through their proxies. He abused his authority. Kenneth Freeman should pay a heavier price for his criminal behavior.
