Back Up and Running

Well, the G5 is back, and I’ve nearly finished re-installing the software. It was clogged up from so many upgrades, software packages, patches, customizations, hacks, etc. that it finally just refused to load the desktop. Since I’m not someone who lives in the UNIX command-line world (or at least, not in a very long time), and for some reason the bootable external drive I had wasn’t (have to make one of those), the tech at the shop simply reinstalled the system. However, he said that I still had a lot of crud on the system, so the best thing to do was back everything up, wipe the drive clean and reinstall the system from scratch. I’ve done that, and all that remains to be installed are some graphic software (Photoshop, Fireworks) and a few other odds and ends. Nearly everything works (except Palm Sync and the Scanner), but I’ll have that going soon. In the meantime, it’s almost like having a new computer!

I’m looking forward to the first visit by my parents, along with my brother and his family next weekend. Hopefully it won’t rain the whole time, but I’m not counting on that. When summer comes, they’ll perhaps come back for a visit when the weather is better.

Déjà vu from the 70’s
A very interesting headline from CNN and Reuters today: “Bush Declares: ‘We Do Not Torture’ “. Is it just me, or doesn’t that sound an awful lot like Dick Nixon’s ‘I am not a crook’ protestation? Funny, that was in November too, in 1973 - the Washington Post has it in their archives. There is more than a hint of desperation when a politician exclaims a negative. No crooks here. Nope. No torture going on there.

The alleged crook/torturer doth profess too much, methinks.

Note that by July of 1973, Nixon was embroiled in many scandals. This political cartoon by Herblock of that era also feels eerily familiar. Just replace some of the text and you could recycle it wholesale: