Mokka mit Schlag

I have come to the sad realization that Barack Obama is a massive failure. Ron Paul would’ve been a much better choice in 2008 and likely in 2012, even for a left-leaning libertarian like myself. I’m not saying that I would vote for any Republican over Barack Obama. Obama is at least marginally less repugnant than most of the Fox news endorsed yahoos like Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney. Nor am I saying that I agree with Ron Paul on everything. I don’t. But there seems to be no reasonable Democratic candidate who will deliver on any of the issues on which I do disagree with Ron Paul. Given that fact, the rational choice, the lesser of two evils, is the Republican. It’s not hard to see why. Just consider what Obama has delivered and compare that to what Ron Paul would’ve delivered.
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I have two desktop PowerMacs to get rid of, two Mac Minis, and one PC running either Windows 2000 or Linux. (I’ll have to boot it to find out.) Update: it’s Ubuntu and Windows 2000. If anyone wants them they’re for sale to the highest bidder. Minimum bid on all items is showing up at my apartment in Brooklyn and hauling them away. I’ll probably put them on Craig’s List or eBay soon, but in the meantime here’s what I’ve got:
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If this blog goes dark, you’ll know why. This always scares me. I wish WordPress had reliable XML export and import, not SQL.

I upgraded The Cafes yesterday. The automatic upgrade failed, but manual upgrade seems to have succeeded.

OK. Seems like the upgrade completed successfully. Holler if you notice any problems. I think I’ll spend the rest of the morning straightening out the old computer mess as part of my general effort to simplify, clean up, and declutter my apartment.
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Every time I bid on eBay I see this:

Notice that bit about “You are agreeing to a contract — You will enter into a legally binding contract to purchase the item from the seller if you’re the winning bidder.” Why don’t sellers have to adhere to it too?
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If Windows were priced similarly to Mac OS X, I would have by now bought at least one full copy each of XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Instead the last non-bundled Windows I bought was Windows 2000 right before XP came out. It’s too damned expensive, and the DRM is too annoying. In fact, I can buy a full computer with Windows for roughly the cost of one Windows 7 license; but I can’t reuse the software on my Mac in Parallels or Bootcamp so I won’t even do that.
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This morning I took a Zipcar out to do some targeted birding on Long Island. First stop was the Timber Point Golf Course West Marina for the Dovekie. However the marina had frozen over and it left overnight. Damn. Should have gone yesterday. And the pictures others got were so cute! These are adorable birds, and you usually have to take a pelagic to get even a quick glimpse of one flying by half a klick away.

Then 30 miles northeast to Upper Lake in Yaphank for my life Trumpeter Swans. The lake had also frozen over, but there was a little water in the far north corner of the lake, and there they were:

Only it turns out to due to captive breeding and release programs Trumpeter Swans aren’t accepted as countable in New York. Double Damn. This is actually the 5th swan species for my list (after Mute, Black, Whooper and Tundra) but only 2–Mute and Tundra–are countable where I saw them.
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