Computer Odds & Ends...

I have a number of laptops in need of repair and some mildly antique networking parts that I am trying to sell on eBay at the moment, real cheap. 

Dell Inspiron B130 notebook (broken power supply)

Compaq Presario F600 notebook (broken power supply)   HP Pavilion N3402 notebook (needs repair)  Linksys PCMCIA Wireless card

Linksys PCMCIA EtherFast card

The minimum bid on each of the laptops is $5, and on the Linksys cards is $1.  The Dell and Compaq laptops need the power connector to motherboard interface repaired.  (These belonged to my son-in-law and daughter, but the costs of getting this particular failure repaired is high enough that it just doesn't make sense.  Someone with experience repairing these might be able to turn these into perfectly functional unit pretty easily.)  I have removed the hard drives from both, and turned them into backup servers for their new desktop.

I am not sure what the HP's problem is.  It won't recharge, but for a couple of tries, it at least booted into the Setup menu.   I can't remember the last time that I used it.  I bought it in the late 1990s, and I suppose if you needed something to run Linux, it might be a good choice.

The Linksys cards I suspect work, although current versions of Windows didn't recognize them as having drivers immediately available.

I hate to throw away stuff that someone who has some time and skill can repair.  That's why the minimum bids are so low.  I would rather get $5 or $10 plus shipping, and have them not take up a landfill.

The Old Blog

I found a way to easily get the postings from my old blog visible again, in a selective way.  The old blog (at least, for some postings that I have carefully checked to make sure that they won't cause me any problems with ambulance chasers) is now available here.  You should be able to see it.  Over the next few weeks, I will go back and either make some of my old postings available, or edit them appropriately and repost them.

Note that I have changed the "Search This Blog" widget on the upper left column to search both the current blog and the old blog.

The Armed Citizen Is Again Operational

I am no longer involved--life is too short to get sued.  But The Armed Citizen continues the mission that it had when I started it: documenting the surprisingly common use of guns in self-defense by ordinary Americans.

Always Astonished At The Bizarre Things Going On Out There

Something calling itself the Bureau of Republic Records has a webpage.  Apparently, a number of patriots got together in Utah this year and created a legitimate constitutional government for the "united States of America" (note the lower case on "united") and somehow or another, the existing illegitimate, unconstitutional government didn't quake in fear and shut down operations.  Nor, for some reason, did the masses refuse to keep funding that existing, illegitimate government.  Imagine that.

Read the statement from the "Chief Justice of the one supreme Court" Nathan Joel Peachey of the "united States of America" as well:

In the 2010 Utah Convention, the free state Republics convened Joint Session Continental Congress and re inhabited the Republic for the united States of America. This was a most historical moment for our nation. Most Americans agree that we are living in a regime of a broken court system, and we are being taxed beyond reasonable ability to pay. For example very recently in Arizona a situation was revealed where a certain CORPORATION doing judging business for the town charged the town over $52000 to win a $100 traffic ticket. The judges were merely officers of their own judging CORPORATION doing business for profit at the expense of the people. This happens all across America these days and do you ever wonder what is wrong?

...

The Republic was not sovereign by any means. The Republic was not supposed to be sovereign. The sovereignty was held by the people. In 1861 they killed the Republic because it was not sovereign. It was easy to do because the Republic was named United States; and was seated within the 10 miles square area of Washington City. They simply incorporated the United States and elevated it to a legal status having the same rights as natural people. This US Corporation vested its power in a board with the executive power of the board being the US Corporation President. Now they created a US Citizenship or the 14th amendment. The moment you became a US Citizen you became subject to the Sovereign Corporation. Today the US Corporation will admit they are sovereign. This information is readily available if you look for it.

To complicate matters even worse after the civil war they incorporated the state names of the free states as political sub-divisions sharing sovereign status with the US CORPORATION. Then to top it all off, they incorporated all the county names as political sub-divisions of the STATE and these COUNTY CORPORATIONS vested their power in a Board of Commissioners. This has been done throughout all the free states of the Republic. The Board of Commissioners of the COUNTY CORPORATION exercises their sovereign CORPORATE governing powers through a maze of complex CORPORATE business agencies and CORPORATE administrative offices for profit. There is NO Republican form of government in any county and no true Constitutional Judicial system in any county in any free state of the Republic. Most of the judges are simply clerks and many are officers sitting on the Board of their own CORPORATIONS that operate judging business for profit as an agency administrative function of the CORPORATE COUNTY with indexes traded on Wall Street.

Fascinating: a reminder of what happens when you only talk to other people that think like yourself.

Part-Time Jobs For College Students

My son is looking for a part-time job in downtown Boise, or near BSU, that can work around his class schedule.  There are jobs out there, but not many in Boise, or they are 30 hours a week or more.

Car Dealers Don't Realize There's a Recession On

I was out looking for used cars with my son, whose Pontiac Sunfire did not survive a taxi collision in Portland several months back.  There has always been a bit of gap between what dealers charge for used cars, and private parties, but that gap seems to have grown to enormous proportions--probably because of the financing that dealers have available.  I was startled to see a Mitsubishi SUV with 171,000 miles on it that had a $4900 price tax.  Even a Chevy TrailBlazer with about 140,000 miles was $3900.  Cars last longer than they used to, but still, these are astonishing prices.

Demonization of Guns

I have been tasked with writing an entry for a scholarly work about the demonization of guns in American history.  While there is a long history of regulation of guns, and there are some examples of demonization of other categories of arms in the 19th century (such as Bowie knives), the earliest example that I can find of demonization of guns is a 1960 court decision from New York that compares a handgun to the serpent in the Garden of Eden, tempting the owner to misuse it.  If you can point me to decisions, popular culture references, or political ads that have made that same comparison--loosely defined as the gun as an evil in itself--I would be appreciative.