Greetings from Dapper Drake.

[silveradept]

It was a (relatively) painless upgrade of OS, and so now I'm running the latest Ubuntu, 6.06 LTS. This means my K Desktop Environment went up from 3.0 to 3.5.3, and a bunch of other goodies, too. "Relatively" painless because in the middle of all the unpacking and installing, the computer borked. With a Windows install, that could mean death, doom, and destruction. Linux, however, I rebooted, learned a new command, and it picked up where it left off and finished up all the installations. After some repository work to make sure that I got the latest K and amaroK, I've made a complete transition. I express a love for the Debian-style packaging system that let me crash int the middle of an upgrade, dust off, and go back to things as if there was nothing wrong.

On the matter of today's date, xanthvamp, in freetobelieve, did it better than I can try, so you're getting her paragraph.

"Been not too bad lately. I've got more of a real post coming, but I'm tired and I wanted to commemorate Satan Day ;) (from my journal).

Today is 06/06/06 - some feel that this is the Number of the Beast, though to be technical it's 666. But really, What's in a number? I did a little research. Some people think it's just 666 silliness - I mean really, is it Armageddon or not? It could be 616 anyway - there are numerology questions about which it really is. (poor Marvel... no wonder there's so much chaos! ;)). I mean, I will say that according to numerology triple numbers ARE power or "Angel" numbers, and 666 = 6+6+6 = 18 = 1+8 = 9, which is the number of endings. How many people actually know that though? Anyway, none-the-less people are spooked by 6-6-06 - what with The Omen opening today and all, it seems that mothers are nervous, heh. Here's a discussion about it, as well as a discussion about the Mark of the Beast.

So, while today's not a holiday per say, it IS a once-in-a-lifetime date, so some people are putting a Mark (of the Beast) on Your Calendar, finding things to do, like have a party in Hell ;).

*laughs* Besides, the Bible never said anything about the Mark of the Beast being a date. So, have a super duckie day today, my loverlies, enjoy the many links provided, and I'll chat with you all later. ;)"

She's done her homework. Someone who hasn't, apparently, is the President, who isn't fazed at all by his abysmal popularity and competence ratings and has decided to push for a "one man, one woman" federal marriage amendment. Because, apparently, "activist courts have left us no other choice". (Nevermind that it's likely that such an amendment, if passed, could give significantly more power to "activist courts". I wonder if Mr. Bush expects to have changed all of the judges sitting on the benches to those that follow his philosophy by then.) And even worse, the Senate took up the issue.

A reasonable question, though, is: Is this a distraction from Iraq? Even if it is, one would think that the populace should be able to hold more than one issue in their brain to give whackings over. In all cases, of course, there will be a supporting and an opposing side. I think we've seen some of the unintended consequences of the state bans - imagine the possibilities for flubs on federal territory.

The Pentagon, in keeping with the new administrative philosophy, has omitted a provision of the Geneva Convention in the new detainee treatment policy. So first ignoring them while claiming the authority to do so to changing policy to make sure that's possible. Really smart move, here.

This entry ends here. Philosophizing and self-reflection in the entry to follow.

Comments

[starkruzr.livejournal.com]

Glad you like it. I do too, actually - when MS stops supporting XP I plan on moving over. Vista be damned.

[silveradept]

The existence of Windows on this hard drive is a concession to the fact that I do like to play games on occasion. If a Windows environment can be suitably emulated to play games in with sufficient performance to make them enjoyable, well, then there's no reason at all to have a Microsoft disc, unless, perchance, the emulatore requires files from it to set itself up.

Vista and its DRM be damned.

[starkruzr.livejournal.com]

I would switch myself if it weren't for the fact that not everything *quite* works right yet. With Automatix, Dapper works quite well - but with a few caveats, chief among them being streaming video media, which I watch quite often.

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

If they weren't using "activist courts" as their excuse, they would be claiming "The steady disintgration of the institution" or something else. It's a shell game of excuses, most of them are pretty lame, but they've only got to be propped up long enough to fit inside someone's head.

[tinchen.livejournal.com]

Somebody somewhere said that the number of the beast isn't 666 anyhow, but 667 or 664 (I can't remember) and that 66 was just a miscalculation. But I don't have a source right now. And 666 is just better to remember.

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

Nah, it's never turned up as 664 or 667 in any copies of the Revelation of St John the Divine, as far as I'm aware.
It's turned up as 616, of course, and it's also fairly obvious that it's based on the correspondance between letters and numbers in both Hebrew and Greek. This leads to (and yes, I know I go on about this) the obvious suggestion that the Beast is the Emperor Nero - NERON QSR and NERO QSR, the two best ways to write his name using sounds in Hebrew, give 666 and 616 respectively when treated as numbers - because he opressed the Christian population of the time somewhat harshly, and the dates are right for when the earliest copies of the Revelation are known.

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

I dare you to move to the (unofficial) Xgl/Compiz packages for fancy 3d accelerated graphical effects...

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

I couldn't help but be a little conscious of the date yesterday at work. It was a bit disturbing to see the 6/6/06 date all over the place, but as far as I know, nothing bad happened. One of my co-workers, Jess, got called Jezebel by a resident, but that could have been her misunderstanding Jess saying her name. I'm kind of surprised too that the world remained relatively quiet. I felt for sure something "bad" would happen yesterday just because the date was right.

I think this Federal Marriage thing is a crock of crap. Why should the federa (or even the state, really) try to tell us who we can and can't marry? It's like that article you linked to several weeks back with the town that wanted to not have unmarried copules with children living togther because it was bad for "family values" or whatever. I feel that the government is alresdy trying to have too much control over the people, and getting them involved in the bedroom? That's just not a good idea. Really. I understand it still squicks some people out to see 2 men walking down the street holding hands, or two women kissing...but those people need to just look away and turn a blind eye. For being a country founded on "freedom", we sure aren't allowing people to be free.

I thikn the pentagon just wants to cover their butts in terms of what's been coming out recently in terms of how the military has been treating people they captured. If they omit parts of the Geneva Convention, they have an excuse for their actions. Never mind that most of the nation is up in arms over it -- they can at least justify it, which is all they really want to do anyway.

[greenhornline.livejournal.com]

I want to know what family values they're trying to protect... has anyone taken a look at the divorce rate lately? might as well give everyone an equal oppertunity to be bitter about a failed marriage... I mean everyone should have a shot at being happy.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

*snort* that's great. I love it!

It's true though. I'm 267 nearly, and a GOOD portion of my contemporaries already have a divorce (And some, a 2nd marriage) behind them.

[silveradept]

The lack of a stable streaming media player at the moment (or is that just an instability in general?) does make for some interesting headaches when it comes to being linked to video stuff. Flash works fine, though.

[silveradept]

With things like amendments, they only need to be propped up long enough for the populace to vote it in. Then, it can be used as intended.

[silveradept]

I think my video card would fall over laughing if I tried.

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

The actual text is:

"Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman."

I really want to be an ass and insist they define "man" and "woman". Do they mean gender-wise or sex-wise? What is the legal definition of these terms? (Ribbing about how W is not really a man but more of a monkey aside.)

[silveradept]

Definition here is a must, of course. Otherwise, it'll mean whatever the courts (or the lackeys in the courts) want it to mean. Which, I suppose, is what W wants, if he's confident that the Supreme Court will uphold his idea over any other.

We want him to say exactly what he means on this one and spell it out. That way, when people go voting, they know exactly what they're doing. And hopefully, they've considered the damage they could do to their kids, or grandkids, or best friends, before they vote to ratify.