I have a DVD that I am very fond of and would like to have with me when I travel with my laptop.

I don’t want to risk damage / loss to the DVD, so I am looking for a way to either record it (Audio + Video) to my hard disk and play it from there or to rip the music tracks from it and save them to disk for later playback. Frankly, because I think it would impose a lighter load on my CPU & battery, I’d prefer audio only, but A + V is also workable.

I’m looking ahead to the summer … and DVD’s are a little fragile to take camping.

If you know of software / techniques for accomplishing these goals in either Windows XP or (preferred) Ubuntu Linux, please post a comment.

Please?

I want to thank Microsoft for laying off 5,000 employees at the same time as they (entirely coincidentally) announced humongous profits. This clear example of corporate loyalty toward those who have served Microsoft so well will certainly be mirrored in future employee and customer loyalty. Click here to read on, my friend.

Barack on a tricycle.

Lots of people have a few words of advice for President Barack Obama. Some of what I’ve read sounds really complicated and will need a wad of cash that I’m not certain the country has available. Good ideas, too. Just too expensive at the moment.

Although I’m not certain that Obama reads this blog on a regular basis (in all fairness, I haven’t read his, either), I’d like to toss just a single idea into the ring. Click here to read on, my friend.

I’m facing one of those rituals of change that life tosses us.

Shortly after birth I got potty trained. Not long afterwards I got a tricycle. Later, I sped around town on 2 wheels and then I found out about girls just in time to get four wheels of my own. Not long afterward, I married. Later I became a Dad and had two little ones of my own to potty train. It’s an interesting cycle and parts of it are definitely fun. I especially liked giving my two little sons rides around the yard on a little Honda 90 I had bought from my sister.

But it’s not all fun and games.

Tomorrow afternoon I will pay the price for being a male of the species over 50 years old. Click here to read on, my friend.

The view out of my motel window wasn’t particularly inspiring; just part of the parking lot and a tiny sliver of an adjacent street. The cars were streaked with gray salt splatters and blended in with the pavement and the sky. From one day to the next, the snow that was piled up near my window by the truck which cleared the parking lot grew and I could see less and less of that gray sameness. By the time I left, I could no longer park my car outside my window.

Inside, though, was warmth and security and I made my meals of tortilla chips and salsa, leaving only long enough to visit with my son and his family, to worship or to replenish my supply of tortilla chips and salsa. Right behind that low, dark building is a Denny’s Restaurant. I ate there once. Too pricey to suit me. And too cold.

Being a vegetarian can be a challenge in our carrion-centric world, but being a vegetarian from out of town is even tougher. My son took me to Mall of the Americas for lunch yesterday. Clarification: he drove, I paid. He left the tip. We dined at a place called “Cantina” with a view of the amusement park below. They have a nice selection of beverages and a cheese and spinach dip. That’s it for their meatless offerings. It was a good dip. $25.39 worth of lunch later (he had a cheese burger), we wandered back out into the mall. As a side note, the PA system in the men’s room plays Spanish language tutorial tapes. There was a candy store just a few yards away and we came away with a bag of loose candy and a couple of Pez dispensers and some refills as gifts. Apparently there is a coterie of Pez collectors somewhere: we saw some models priced at nearly $800.

I could see me staying in this motel for months. On the second day I had made peace with the in-room safe and that left no loose ends for me. Except that my wife was 800 miles to the east, I’d have been content to stay in that motel room indefinitely, near my son and his family.

Being an empty-nester is the pits.

I keep seeing references to “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell splattered all over the web. I’ve read it and yes, it IS “that good”.

I wasn’t going to post a link to it, though, until I was prepared to write a fuller review. But maybe it’s better if you just read it for yourself. I bought it in an airport and got rooked into paying about $15 for it. Honestly … that was the printed list price.

It was worth the $15, but I realize now that I could have bought it for much less if I had just waited to click the link below.

Or something like that.

Here’s a link to it. It’s basically about how we can influence our world (hopefully for the better … it’s getting to be a real mess) by doing a better job of identifying the root problems and then by acting on a series of relatively straightforward decisions. It’ll give you something to do while you wait for Armageddon to kick in in earnest.

I’ve got a fairly busy schedule, but I read it in a week. I think you will, too. However, I must warn you that it’s not for lightweights who need everything spelled out for them and still get it wrong. But if you are the sort who can read a book and come away inspired to apply its principles in your life, you’ll get a lot of mileage from this book.

The BBC posted this last September (I’m a little behind in my reading). There is a video at the bottom and near the end of the video some fellow, purportedly from Ontrack, is heard telling the world that a simple reformat is enough to clear a hard-drive of data.

Click here to read on, my friend.

I DO NOT take sides in politics.

Not locally. Not internationally.

I even do my best to avoid them within my own family.

But, as a some-time traveler* I DO have an interest in how people live their lives around the world and, as a serious Christian, for the basic concept of fairness.

If nothing else, while I am awaiting the opening salvos of Armageddon, it gives me something to do and keeps me out of the pool halls and gin mills. So, humor me for a moment.

I want you to take a look at this map.

Click on the image for a larger version.

To me, it looks like the Palestinians are being systematically wiped off the surface of the earth.

When this sort of thing happened to the Jews, it was called ‘genocide’. Then, as now, the world wrung its hands but took almost no action to stop the killing. The Israelis have been refusing to let needed food and water into the Gaza strip for years. From time to time they slaughter additional thousands. Like right now.

The Balfour Declaration gave a little land to the Jews … leaving most of it for the Palestinians (who, for the most part, were there first). Since then, there has been near-constant warfare between the two that left the Jews, with considerable US help, holding much the larger share. It seems clear that the Jews want  no Palestinians at all and are progressively working to achieve that goal.Once, a long time ago, they were commanded to take this land by force. But this time there has been no divine direction.

What will the Jews do when this map is all white? Where will they turn once they have achieved this goal? (It would be nice if Obama ‘urged’ them to give back a large chunk of it, including considerable arable land, a unified geography, and access to the sea … but don’t hold your breath.)

Just a thought … an ugly one.

See that little dog-leg at the north? That stretches into Lebanon.

Your comments, as always, are welcome.

ADDENDUM: Today, Jan. 4, 2009, the Israeli army is ripping into the Gaza strip (the little piece of green at the middle-left of the last map.) Although much of the rest of the nations in the world were pushing for at least token opposition to this aggression, the United States exerted its veto power on the U.N. Security Council to keep a mandated cease fire from passing. As mentioned earlier, the Israelis couldn’t wipe out the Palestinians without U.S. help. This partisan help is –exactly- the sort of thing that keeps the terrorists fueled up and ready to fight. There’s a lot more to this story … you really owe it to yourself to investigate a bit deeper. There is good reason why the Israelis won’t permit foreign journalists into the Gaza strip … and it’s not to protect the journalists.

* Various parts of the US and a couple islands elsewhere.

“… time and unforeseen circumstances befall us all.”

That’s from Ecclesiastes 9:11. You might find it enlightening to read the rest of the verse. Even an IED-proof military vehicle might have found this tree a challenge.

This lightweight car never stood a chance.

Had this person been driving just a little slower, the accident might never have happened at all. Had the accident happened just part of a second later, it likely would have been fatal. As it is, the car is a total wreck but the occupants survived. I seem to recall reading where Chuck Yeager used to say “Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.”

Nice landing.

The accident happened on December 29, 2008, a couple hundred yards from my house. But it needn’t have happened at all.

As of Jan. 5, 2009, it still hasn’t been cleared away.

Click here to read on, my friend.