Year: 2009

Robbin Hood Lives On

1283:

Lytil Jhon and Robyne Hude
Wayth-men ware commendyd gude
In Yngil-wode and Barnysdale
Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale.

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In modern popular culture Robbin Hood is noted for “robbing the rich to give to the poor” – fighting against injustice and tyranny. Who has not watched at least one movie or cartoon featuring this figure from folklore?
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Seems Robbin Hood’s band of merry men and women are still at work. In Modesto, California anyway.
Found in the Central Valley indymedia – a Communique from the Robin Hoods no less.
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We, the Robin Hoods, take credit for providing the massive amounts of free food that was left in the Airport District park of Modesto California last week, early in the morning. The food we left ranged from rice, beans, and other staples, and was available free of charge to anyone who wished to take it. To make our intentions for the action clear, we left behind a banner at the scene which read, “Resist the Recession! – ROB THE RICH!” The food was appropriated from various capitalists – and was thus free (and very easy) to obtain.

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The whole “Communique” can be read here.
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The Robin Hood’ group appropriated food (stole?) and distributed it in a working class neighborhood in Modesto California. While I do see the humor and the kindness involved I miss the radical against the capitalists part. But . … if someone left a free bag of food on my doorstep I am not so sure that I would care where it came from other than that it was safe.
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What do you think? Is spirit of Robin Hood alive and well? Is there an innate desire for equality in us? Or, are they just a bunch of crazy extremists?
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Perhaps stealing from the rich like the Bush’s is ok? I get pissed when someone steals from me to give to who they think is more deserving, usually themselves. But, if I caught a hungry person stealing food – I am not so sure I could get that upset.
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Moral issues again.
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So to Robin Hood or not to Robin Hood – that is the question.

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Core of the Matter

It is one of the nights where I really do not have anything much to say. I have been tired this weekend and spent most of my time watching the races, reading, laying about the place. Now you would think as tired as I feel I could get to sleep at a decent time – like before 4am.
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The rain does not entice me into going outside, I don’t wanna be around a bunch of people, and my eye balls are misbehaving. So, pretty much doing nothing is it right now. I need to fix the downstairs bathroom sink. It is a pedestal type and I had to remove it from the wall in order to replace the faucet and drain pipe. Have I done it – NO . … my camera gear is in a disarranged pile on my work area right behind me and I should get all the lens etc back into the case – emmmm.. I have been using my little point n shoot Pentax to take silly pics around the house. I need to charge my D80 batteries, another on the list of chit I have not done.
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I did get off my lazy arse to look for my MP3 player. I drove myself nuts trying to figure out where the heck I had left it only to find it in Mr. Catfish’s pile of toys. LOL my dog snitched my MP4 player – I guess he likes the tunes? Maybe the bright yellow color? The battery is dead now too so he must have turned it on. Don’t snicker, both our dogs turn the television on and off and change the channels while we are gone.pinkyandmp3player
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Now once and awhile I find the urge to share secrets here – just cause. Those of you who have read this blog long enough know that I love(d) to ride motorcycles. In fact right before I had my stokes I had just purchased a new one. If I only new . … it sits in the back yard all covered up snug as a bug waiting for me to sale it.

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In 2004 I promised my docs that oh no! I would never be stupid enough to ride it! Well . …:mrgreen:

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I will spill the beans. First off, let me say, I do not ride it anymore :(. But, I did manage to get in some rides before letting go. I love to feeling when I ride. I rode the first time in 1975 and fell in love with the feeling of freedom.  I even spent some productive time working as a mechanics helper in a motorcycle shop. Ok, back to the secret. I rode it OK. My last ride was 2006 when I somehow managed to stay upright (rubber side down) and made it up to Redding to the Hog State Rally. When I arrived at my friends house I could not even get my tired arse off of it. I had blast getting there though.  The sad thing was on the way home I knew that it was my last ride. For the first time in my life I had to admit that no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much effort I put towards a goal – it was useless. Bummer.

Hog Patches

Hog Patches

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My docs would more than likely fill out one of those DMV forms if they knew I rode it, ever, at all, period. I sort of lied my way out of that one – the thought of losing my M class one my license was a super big deal to me.  Now I just count myself lucky that I can still operate my truck safely.
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In the last few years I have had more bummer moments. The past six months have brought way too many bummer moments and now this stupid MS crap. I guess having a name for all this crazy stuff is better than not, then again I am not so sure about that either.
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Instead souring around corners and pushing the velocity barrier I navigate store isles and read about others great adventures. I am going to load the MP3 of Indiana Wants Me after listening to it over at A Stellar Life It plays right after Born To Be Wild and Logical. Ever heard Scooters version of Logical?
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MS has trapped some core part of my rebel soul and it so needs to fight it’s way out.

My DingBat SQL Moment

Sometimes you can just outsmart yourself. I do this a lot lately. I spend the afternoon deactivating all my plugins, removing all the used widgets, went to the basic default theme, and took a coffee break. I then tried to access my database via the PHPMyAdmin application. Of course, as usual, my yahoo dashboard made me reinstall it again. Once connected to the database I deleted all table entries that were left over from long ago used plugins. So far, so good. I then changed back to the theme I am using, and individually activated on plug in at a time checking if the theme would break in IE. After checking every plugin, every widget, the blog was not broken on IE anymore WOO HOO I am thinking.
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I read my newsreader feeds and then went back to the blog. Instead of a login page I got the dreaded unable to connect with the database error. Eh? I have not done a thing. Maybe it was a cookie thing so it worked and then when I came back it was broken?
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Went back to PHPAdmin and guess what – no connect to the database. After much help file reading etc. I came to the conclusion the mysql was just not there.
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I finally gave up and called the help desk. Usually this is not a good thing – push button – then the next button – hold -listen to awful music – hold – and so it goes. But, this time when I did get a tech they were actually nice – nice and helpful. After I convinced him that I thought the database the actual MySQL was gone he looked and went ugh did you delete it? He said he would have the engineers give me a call in the next 24hrs.
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Now, I am not wanting to wait no? So I chatted it up with him and finally convinced him that I really wanted the database reset. He was not wanting to do this as it really is a site reset and he thought I would get wacky I am sure if my site went bye bye. I explained and convinced him that I had backups and would not mind restoring everything. Site reset. Passwords verified to work -all is good.
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I restored my database for WordPress and viewed my site – yeah – it is all there up except maybe a few comments that were left after the backup. Dinner, television, time to write a post. Now I go to log on and it says: no such user password whatevers. …
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I open the database and find that the tables do not have all the rows like my other sites database – mysteriously missing: user meta data and users. Well, I guess if the database say I don’t exist …..
So, more reading, going nuts, I found an old backup I did that was text and scrolled through a zillion lines till I luckily found the table entries for the missing data. I followed some instructions I found on the net and recreated the entries. Re importing the backup was no joy so I had to do it via the sql quires.
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All looks good for now except – AUGH the dang theme is broken in IE again – the Gods have spoken – it is gonna stay that way. So get Firefox, Netscape, Chrome, or deal with it LOL.
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So to Ranehir in India – thank you – you were super – you were the best tech I have ever dealt with. I sent a letter to your boss telling them how great you were too.
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To Me: how the heck did I delete MySQL???? I think I am turning into a dingbat. Like Edith. And I just noted that all my categories are gone – – – Ding Bat – – –

Neuro Ninja

Cham the MS fighter is making friends fast. Today she ran into Neuro Ninja. Neuro Ninja comes from a long lineage of neuro warriors. Fighting off misguided T-cells while clearing the way for other super hero’s to gather data on the mechanisms of myelin destruction along the nerve electrical pathways.
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Cham and Neuro spent hit it off immediately. Although Cham was a little put off by Neuro Ninja’s lack of hair. Neuro expained that it was an adaptation that evolved in her family to avoid the static in the neuro net environment. The loss of myelin interferes with the transmission of nerve signals causing short circuits that can be hazardous. Neuro told her she was tired of having a bad hair days. Her suit is also non conducting like Chams.
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Chameleon the MS Fighter and Neuro Ninja will be training together in the hopes of becoming true SuperHero’s and finding a cure for Multiple Sclerosis.
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Cham and Neuro were last seen tossing a ball . …

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