2011 — 17 July: Sunday

Despite the forecast1 we intend to try for a walk in an hour or so. Must be mad.

There's a certain amount of grim amusement to be derived here. Source and snippet:

Yet even though their sums do not add up, they will not budge. They are immovable. Steve King, an ultra-conservative from Iowa, says that warnings from Wall Street's finest are "empty threats". Others, elected as Tea Party candidates last November, consider they have been told by God to pursue the holy mission of rolling back the insidious and demoralising advance of the federal government. Taxation is the illegitimate confiscation of honest citizens' hard-earned dollars; in a perfect world, there would be a tiny state, close to no taxation and no regulation. Americans must confront the reality that their country is allegedly bankrupt, a situation they say is created by irresponsible Democrat politicians and their allies, false Republicans. "Real Republicans" don't blink.

Will Hutton in The Observer


Remind me, were the Bushes (pere et fils) "real" Republicans? Mr Murdoch, it seems, can also carry some of the can for the latest impending financial Armageddon. What was that about "fix the problem, not the blame"?

I don't suppose...

... even two miles out of our six-plus stroll around Hinton Ampner were actually in rain, but it felt like it, and we both needed our waterproofs several times. Still, the fresh air and exercise was good. Acting on a clarification of Mike's earlier advice, I've now set the Buffalo NAS the task of scanning its two RAID arrays which can, I gather, take several hours. The five or ten minutes it took yesterday to do a simple "disk check" is somewhat less thorough, I gather, in its inspection and assessment of any problems. Fingers crossed.

What's next while the laundry launders? How about another cuppa? Then I can resume battle with my home accounts program. This being grown-up and mature lark isn't much fun, is it?

Noticing...

... that my Freesat box had switched itself on, I thought I might as well check for any software updates (none) and then wander briefly up the latest channel list to see if anything remotely worth watching has yet appeared (it hasn't). There are now five HD channels, though it's clear that roving reports on Channel 4 News are not HD. Meanwhile (at 18:56) the NAS continues its array scanning. And, like Stuart Maconie, I've just learned that Bo Hansson died last year.

Speedy Gonzales

Guess who's been reading more about those tempting PCI-E SDDs?

OCZ SSD

Having fitted a Velociraptor boot drive just last week, of course!

Why am I so tired, I wonder? G'night.

  

Footnote

1  Showers, of course. It is July, after all.