Maggie's Farm

Do you remember John F. Kennedy, Jr. dying in an airplane crash a few years ago?  I confess, I didn't know much about the guy.  About the last thing I remember, little John-John was at his father's funeral in 1963:

Then I remember seeing him on the cover of People Mag:

But that's about it.  The next thing I know, the TV's breaking in with news that his plane's missing and he's presumed dead, which, sadly, turned out to be true.  In brief, he was flying with his wife and her sister to the Kennedy house in Massachusetts.  He was flying a Piper Saratoga, a 6-seat high-performance airplane.  He was flying at night, in hazy conditions, over water, and without an instrument rating.

Without ground lights or a horizon to act as reference points, inexperienced pilots can suffer from 'spatial disorientation.'  Basically, your inner ear is telling you the plane is turning when it's not.  Obviously very dangerous.  That's one of the things you learn for your instrument rating; to trust the gauges, not your own senses.

Furthermore, spatial disorientation has varying degrees.  Being slightly disoriented from something else, such as waking from sleep, will lead to even greater spatial disorientation.

Oddly, in all the articles and TV shows I saw afterward, no one mentioned what really might have happened that dark and fateful night, and who, ultimately, was to blame.  And yet what happened seemed so obvious to me at the time.

Two food posts; a new one and an oldie.

If you like fast-food burgers, you have got to get by a McDuck's and chow down on their Angus burger before they disappear.  (McDonald's has a long and honorable history of putting some really great foods out there — only to remove them a few months later because they didn't meet sales expectations.  People still talk about their McRibs.)

I've yakked with five or six people about the Angus burger, and they all have a similar opinion.  You take your first bite, not knowing what to expect, and you think...

"Oh!  It's like a restaurant hamburger!"

I was at a local restaurant a few nights later and confirmed with the waitress that most normal restaurants use Angus beef for their burgers.  I'd certainly heard the term before, but had never associated it with a distinct taste until now.

Although they have three pre-set meals (pictured above), you can order them however you like.  The usual 'trick' to fast-food burgers is to order them a special way so they'll cook it fresh.  Personally, when it comes to fast-food burgers, I'm a Wendy's fan, but the Angus burger has gone right to the top of the list.  Get 'em while you can.

And from my own site:

The Secret of Subway Sandwiches

Subway Sandwiches has a really great sandwich — and it's not even on the menu.  It's called a "Club sandwich with vinaigrette dressing," and, I'm tellin' ya, it's a slice o' Heaven.  The vinaigrette dressing is somewhat like an Italian salad dressing, although French, if that makes sense.  It's vinegar-y and garlic-y, tart, tangy and tasty.

I get mine with just meat, lettuce and onions; no cheese or other fixings.  So, if you get yours with cheese and a bunch of fixings, and it just doesn't go with the vinaigrette dressing, oh well.

I'd suggest the following:

• Get the vinaigrette dressing 'to go' in a little cup so you can put it on yourself.  I've had them ruin sandwiches by putting on too much.


• Get it on their "honey oat" bread.  If you already have a favorite Subway bread, go ahead and try it on that, but if something seems off, try it on the honey oat.  I've had it on three or four types, but the second I tried it on honey oat, I said, 'That's it!"


• Have it toasted after the meat goes on, but before the fixings.  This really brings out the bread flavor.


• If you take part of it home and want to re-heat it later, heat it at 300 degrees for about 20 minutes from a cold start.  You just want it warm, not cooked.  Take the fixings off first.


• If you like BBQ chips, you'll dig how they go with the vinaigrette dressing.  Great combo.

 
This (former) weekly Saturday morning feature will slowly, over time, turn you into a full-fledged computer expert. More info here.
 

Lesson 17: Facts & Fallacies

This is the wind-up to the series.
 

I was reading some comments on RedState the other day and one of the commenters — an obviously very knowledgeable fellow — was clearly and concisely explaining to everyone what the word "bandwidth" meant.  By the confidence with which he wrote, there was little doubt he knew precisely what he was talking about.

And he couldn't have been more wrong.

Nor am I criticizing him.  There's a lot of confusion out there, often because a term has two different meanings depending upon context, and such was the case here.  With other terms, it might be a matter of people believing the ad hype, or a word's meaning has simply evolved over time.

With all this in mind, here's a Points of Confusion list I've come up with:

Definitions
'Bandwidth'
'Image'
'Resolution'
'Web' & 'Internet'
'Disc' & 'Disk'

The Internet
Connection & Download Rates
Download Accelerators
Web Site Hits
What You're Seeing Isn't The Web
Cookies

Software
Mac vs the PC
Firefox
Macs, Firefox and Malware
Newer Isn't Necessarily Better
Screensavers
Backing Things Up

Hardware
Memory & Hard Drives
Faster CPUs
Computers Wearing Out
Defragmenting Hard Drives
Printer Ink Costs

The goods are below the fold.  You might bookmark the page so you can throw it in some blowhard's face the next time you see someone spouting nonsense.  For example, it's amazing how many people think that computers "wear out" over time, like a car.  In truth, your computer (the hardware part) is just as fast as the day it was made.  It's the software that "wears out", but that's easily remedied.  If you've found your machine slowing down over time, the solution might be below.

This is one of my favorite web characters.  He's been doing a weekly show for a number of years and every episode is great.  The best thing about him is that he does a very credible job of lampooning both sides equally.  Uncle Jay's web site is here.

There's an immense difference between a Christmas gift that you'd like very much but hesitate to ask for because it's expensive or hard to obtain — and a gift you can't ask for at all because of the time and effort involved.
 

Between hanging out at the tiki hut with the locals and going to the Sunday BBQ at the nearby park, I tend to intermingle with 'regular' people a fair amount; meaning, people who aren't computer whizzes and/or savvy blog participants.

And it's not surprising that a huge number of people out there would love to get a little blog site going where they could post their daily thoughts ("You wouldn't believe what happened to me just now at the supermarket!") and pics and videos for family and friends to enjoy, yet most of them never even attempt it.

In pursuing the issue, the answer, unsurprisingly, is that people simply don't think they have the ability to put one together.  And, admittedly, it probably sounds a little daunting to hear you have to "construct" a blog site when you're not even sure what an "icon" or "menu" is.

So, do something really special this year and give them a ready-to-go site.  It'll cost about a hundred clams for the web hosting service for a year, and if you use the company I recommend they'll throw in the cost of the domain name, which can go for upward of $35 at other places.

Setting up the site is a snap.  You download a free FTP program and use that to upload the files for the blogging program.  There's a 'Settings' page where you'll make a few tweaks and you're ready to roll.

The easy-to-follow instructions that will walk you through the whole process are on my Easy-Blogsite.  If you run into a snag, just ask here in one of my posts and I'll email you back and we'll get the rascal ironed out.
 

As far as the actual present goes, it might be fun to simply give them a nice Xmas card with three mysterious lines of information on it:

• a recognizable web site address like "ThePattersonFamily.com" or "BobsBlogSite.com"
   
• name: (their account name)
   
• pass: (their account password)

Then be with them the first time they go to the site.  You'd have a few 'Welcome!' posts on the home page, interesting links in the sidebar, and maybe some family pics or even videos on display.  It should be a great moment when they suddenly 'get it' and ask, "You mean this is all mine??"

Then go to the main editor and show them how easy it is to make a post.  Just type merrily away and hit the 'Publish' button.  Show them how easy it is to import a picture from their computer, and how they can change the entire look of their new site with one click of the mouse using the fabulous 'themes' you've pre-installed.  Their feelings will range from "stunned" to "beyond thrilled."

On my end, I'm giving one to a 68-year-old lady whom I've never met, but have been conversing with via email for over a decade.  Her three best friends have blog sites but, no matter how often I tell her how easy it is to set up, she just won't do it.  Yet I know she's dying to join in the fun.  The sweet old gal will probably break down in tears on Christmas morning when she sees it.  She loves bunny rabbits and I found an Easter theme that's just loaded with cute bunnies.  I replaced all the 'Easter' stuff with her own name and it looks terrific.

I hope she likes pink and blue.

So, would you rather give Grandma her 25th set of bathroom towels and Grandpa his 17th pipe rack, or something that'll put some zest back in their lives?  Once they get nested into a blogring of similar interests (golfing, macramé, my pet's latest funny antics, etc), they'll have a ball.

Or how about that old person next door who spends all day long watching TV?  I don't have to tell you, of all people, the meaning the blogosphere can have on one's life.  A spouse, a girlfriend, a boyfriend, your best friend, your kids — can you think of a more appreciated gift than a gift one cannot ask for?

This Christmas, give that someone special a gift like no other.

Give them a door to the world.
 

 
According to feedback here and elsewhere, the article I posted last week on increasing one's browsing speed made a real difference with certain systems.  Here's another trick that might improve your online performance.  This is for WinXP. 

 
Certain programs that require online access use what's called the "QoS Policy" in Windows, which allots them a slice of your bandwidth.  In its wild and fanciful way, Windows somehow figures that receiving a business fax or accessing an online database is more important than downloading more Web porn — those crazy fools.

Traditionally, if someone's tweaking their system, the QoS is turned off.  But I was reading a guide the other day and it said that some programs will sense it's off and turn it back on, so the 'trick' is to leave it on — but set it to 0%.

Relatively easy procedure is below the fold.

Dyson Telescopic Reachâ„¢
DC 14 Animal Upright Vacuum

The reason it costs so much is because it also acts as an animal pest control device, hence the name.  Stick the long Telescopic Reachâ„¢ tube into a mouse hole and it'll snake along inside the wall, sucking up mice, rats, ticks, termites, and other assorted wall critters.  The reviews say it works pretty well although you have to keep the canister emptied or the frantic clawing from the trapped mice tends to get on one's nerves.

However...

If you'd like to buy a normal kickass vacuum cleaner (and not go around killing innocent wall mice in the process), this is the one:

It's a Bissell Lift-Off.  As an upright vac, it's got the usual power-mower brush built into the head that combs a carpet clean.  12 amps provides oodles of suction power.

But wait!  What about those pesky cobwebs up in the corners of the ceiling?

No problem:

The canister pops off the chassis and becomes a hand-held portable.  Pretty slick, eh?  How they did it is very clever.  It's one of those things that as soon as you see it you think, "How come everybody doesn't do it this way?"

Mine's a few years old and they've updated the line.  The new one looks like this.  It appears to be identical except for color.  If you shop around, search for "Bissell Lift-Off".

More pics & info on this clever appliance below the fold.

 
I remember back in '87, buying my first modem.  The expensive new 2400 bauds were out, but I settled for a normal 1200 baud.  "There's no need to go so fast," I said at the time.  "So what if it takes an extra thirty minutes to download a file?  Big deal!  This new 'faster and faster' modem thing is just a fad!"

And, for the most part, it could be argued I was right.  Okay, so it would take six minutes to display this page with my new modem — but what's a mere six minutes for a quality product like a Maggie's Farm home page?  Of course, waiting half a day to see one of the videos might irk some of its more impetuous readers, so there might be something to this 'faster and faster' thing, after all.

And, yes, I eventually bought the lightning-fast 2400 baud modem.  I was smokin'!  "With this kind of speed, I'll never have to upgrade again!," I proclaimed loudly for all to hear.

Sticking tightly to my resolve, I immediately bought a 9600 modem when they came out.  Then a 14.4.  Then a 19.2.  Then a 28.8.  Then a 33.6.  Then a 56K.  Then I combined two 56K's using MultiLink.  Then I got one of them fancy new 'experimental' ADSL modems at .768 meg.  Then cable at 1 meg.  Then 1.5.  Then 2.  Then 3.  Then 5.

Then I ended up going wireless.

I always was a sucker for fads.

 
And, during that entire time, I tried program after program and tweak file after tweak file that claimed it would increase my Internet speed, and not one of them ever did.

Until this rascal drifted along.

This is a patch to update Windows XP (and earlier) to meet current broadband standards.  Vista already has the updates.  To possibly double your browsing speed, please...
 

One of these days I'm going to write a post called "The Age of Ism".  Racism, sexism, ageism, whateverism; they're all bad — and you know it.

And Maggie's Farm's may be guilty of one of the worst isms of all:

Boatism.

That's right.  Little did Bird Dog know when he took me on that one day I'd be training my 3000X electron microscope on Maggie's, itself, exposing its dark and sordid secret to the light of day.

Boatism.

Are you ready for this?  To the best of my knowledge, Maggie's Farm has never, not once, featured a motoryacht.  Nothing but sailboats, sailboats, sailboats!

In my book?  Guilty of boatism in the first degree.

Mine looks just like this little honey:

NOT a sailboat

Below the fold: The perils and pitfalls of living in a marina and having to deal with bugs, slime, sailboat owners and fungus; tips on buying the right power saw to get rid of those pesky masts blocking your view; hints on using the new Black & Decker Underwater Drill Gun when playing fun tricks on your sailboat-owning neighbors; and, for the best gag of all, how to properly use a hypodermic syringe to inject a rolled-up sail with sulfuric acid late at night so there are gigantic holes in it the next time it's opened.  The expression on the owner's face is just priceless!

   
Life, indeed, has a sense of irony.
 

 
What happens in Vegas, well, sometimes doesn't stay in Vegas. This is a genuine photo of an Obama campaign office in Las Vegas. I couldn't have planned this shot better myself, and I'm a guy who knows his way around photoshopping for fun and vengeance.
 

Hat tip: RedState
 

Behold, the Magni autogyro:
 

 
Consider it the large-scale industrial version of a hummingbird.  Full rundown here.

Think: "Chistmas wish list."
 

So there I was, innocently minding my own business, when suddenly I came across a video on some blog site named Maggie's Barn or sumpin' and I wanted to watch it.  Little knowing that my fate was already sealed, I clicked on the box.

It started playing, but it seemed a little small so I clicked on the side of the window to go to the YouTube version so I could watch it full-screen.  The original was still playing in the background when the YouTube page opened and its video started playing as well.
 

Blink!

 
That was the last online video I heard for the rest of the evening.  Somehow, two videos playing at once messed up something in the system and that was that.  I ran Registry cleaners, Norton WinDoctor, warm-booted, cold-booted, prayed to the various computer gods, promised I'd never look at porno again, but nothin' worked.  (I think my computer knows when I'm lying to it, dammit)

The next step would have been to reinstall Flash, but I wouldn't have been hopeful.  Program files don't "break", and internal system settings (like what got messed up here) usually aren't touched by program installations.  Regardless, in this case I had a much better option.

It's to note that during this entire time, when most people would be pulling their hair out, my blood pressure never rose an iota.  After trying the fix-it programs last night and getting nowhere, I watched a movie and hit the hay.  This morning while I was eating breakfast I reinstalled the image file I made of the C Drive last Saturday and the system works perfectly.

And if this had happened to someone not using an image file backup system?

Nightmare.

Regular backup programs only back up files, and, even if you tell it to back up the system files, it can't get them all because the ones that are "in use" can't be copied.  The answer is an image file program.  It makes a 'snapshot' of your entire C Drive and turns this 'image' into one great big file.  Come meltdown time, you merely tell the program to write the big file back to the hard drive, overwriting your damaged system.  Ten minutes later and you're good to go.  Nor do you lose any email or bookmarks or personal files if you follow my routine.

And that's all.  Just a little reminder as to how quickly a system can go into the toilet, and how easy it is to fix if you have the right tool.  The full Maggie's post is here.
 

By the way, a couple of readers named "Meta" and "Luther McLeod" left a whole bunch of nasty comments in my posts over the weekend (since deleted) so I'm forced to moderate the comments until the situation improves.  An example from Meta is down below in the comments (the quote).  If you think you're actually real, Meta begs to disagree.
 

I have a good example here of how powerful a simple picture can be when it comes to selling a message.  In the web ad below, note the strong, wise look of presidential candidate Joe Biden as he takes his young vice-presidential protégé by the arm and points to his vision of a better tomorrow.
 

 
Who could fail to be moved?
 

(more silliness below the fold)

Pic: Anticipating a McCain/Palin landslide after Joe The Plumber's impressive showing at last night's debate, the original French company that built the Statue of Liberty starts making plans for its replacement.

Well, I have dreadful news for you.

It really shouldn't be my job to shatter your life like this.  We here at Maggie's Farm occupy most of our time tendin' the fields an' milkin' the cows an' sloppin' the hogs, but in those few brief moments of spare time we have, we use it to bring you, the Maggie's Valued Readerâ„¢, nothing but good, clean, wholesome radical right-wing anti-Obama smears news.

Well, we might as well get this over with.  Better you hear it from a friend than some heartless voice on a newscast.

Here goes.

You live in fear.

Yes, you heard me right.  From the fearful instant you fearfully wake up to the fearful moment you fearfully close your eyes after another fearfully long fear-filled day, according to Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, the one overriding emotion that governs your life...

is fear.

And you'd just never guess why.

Pic: In a mighty show of strength, presidential candidate John McCain pushes back against the media's unbridled adulation of Barack Obama, gaining precious micropoint upon micropoint in the latest polls.  "It looks like it's evening up," said Team McCain spokesman Jim Gunther.  "Give or take."
 

The last of the presidential debates is on tonight at 9 Eastern.  If anything, the burden is on McCain, as he's the one who claimed he'd 'come out swinging' in tonight's snoozefest hot political meltdown showdown at the bloated plutocratic media event OK Corral.
 

(McCain strapping on 6-gun)

"Reach for the sky, ya dirty var-, ouch!  Damn war wound!"

"Ooo, I'd never touch a nasty gun like that!  How icky!"

It doesn't look to be purty.
 

For more not purty things, including me saying some really not-purty things about polls, please... make that purty please...

 
Yesterday, I posted a short article on opening Desktop icons in full-screen mode.  This morning, commenter Ron House steered me toward a very cool program named AutoSizer that does a couple of nifty tricks:

• For pesky programs like Internet Explorer that open Desktop icons and email links in half-screen mode, it forces them to always open in full-screen mode.
  


• For pesky programs like the Calculator which tend to pop open anywhere on the Desktop, it'll 'center' them so they always open in the same place.

The program is free, home site is here.  It's a quick install, and if you're running a sensitive program like ZoneAlarm, 'allow' it access to system files.  If you don't like it putting an icon in the SysTray, remove it via Options.

In regards to Internet Explorer, it does have one little problem.  It'll open every IE window full-screen size, whereas in some cases, like an online editor popping open a small window so you can select an option, it might be a bit annoying.  But, compared to the general annoyance of it opening in half-size mode, it's still a big win.

Usage:  First, open the program in question, then open AutoSizer, highlight the program's entry and click on the 'AutoSize' button.  Make your selection from the drop-down menu and that should do it.  For centering a small program, select 'Resize' then 'Center'.

Take a bow, Ron, and thanks!

Pic: In a blatant act of political partisanship, Doc plugs his own personal choice for president.  (Or was that the wrong verb to use?)
 

I'm pretty good at this political prognostication stuff, so I'm feeling quite confident when I make this bold prediction regarding tonight's debate:

I predict the Republicans will claim McCain won and the Democrats will claim Obama won.

Pretty daring of me, don't you think?  Well, when you have the keen political insight I'm gifted with, bold predictions like this just come naturally.  'Daring' is my middle name.

For more keen, indepthful, bold-like and daring insights into the foul, fetid, stinking morass we call modern politics, please...

I don't spend much time reading the news, but it appears there's an election coming up sometime soon.  I glanced over the article and saw the word "Alaska", so I presume we're voting on whether or not to finally make it a state.  Big mistake!  All that barren wasteland covered with a sheet of ice?  I say sell it back to the Russians!

We might finally make a profit!
 

The second of the three presidential debates is on tonight at 9 Eastern.  Despite the rancor of their recent TV ads, I don't expect many fireworks.  They'll be asked about the vitriol in their recent ads, but that's different.  I think it'll be the usual fluff, or as one pundit put it:

It might be a snooze-fest, full of earnest questions and foggy bromides.

(A good example of what separates us lowly bloggers from professional pundits — we never think of cool expressions like "foggy bromides".)

I originally thought someone had said this would be all four candidates, but it's just Obama and McCain, dagnibbit.  Without you-know-who's perky self, I wouldn't be surprised to hear it had an extremely low turnout, and I'd note that it's going up against some TV heavyweights, like 'Law & Order' and 'House'.
 

In my post-debate wrap-up yesterday, I mentioned a threat that had been flung across the aisle at one point, caught in full by few except Biden, himself.  He understood the threat perfectly and it evoked one of his wildest, most unhinged responses of the evening.  Most people probably assumed he was just taking the opportunity to lash out at Cheney for whatever reason, but he and Palin were sharing a very different message.

We'll review the transcript first, then we'll go to the video and you can watch how easily this shotgun-barreled threat flows from her lips, and how easily the import of what she's really saying would be lost on anyone except those tuned into the buzzwordspeak of politics, and why it evoked Biden's somewhat deranged response.
 

Clever post title, eh?
 

My notes on the Palin-Biden debate.
 

By The Numbers

• Number of fireworks between the candidates: 0
   
• Number of Palin colloquialisms: 48
   
• Number of times she turned the linguistic world on its ear by pronouncing it "nu-ku-lar": 11
   
• Number of lies* by Biden: dozens
   
• Number of lies* by Palin: 3

(*you'd better hope they're lies — because the only alternative is that these people are extremely stupid)

• Possible bias by the moderator: 1
   
• Number of very clever, dangerous, adroit, deft and dazzling threats: 1
   

Palin Colloquialism Breakdown

• "Eye-rack" (dozens)
   
• "nu-ku-lar" (11)
   
• "Ditn't", "ya", "darn right" (2)
   
• "heckofalot", "hurtin'", "headin", "cravin", "gonna", "you guys", "Say it ain't so, Joe", "doggone it", "back ye up there" (1)

See Appendix C for etymological references, Appendix D for translation tables.
 

This is directed to those of you planning on watching the Palin-Biden debate tonight at 9 EDT.  It's the only debate they'll have.

This is a warning.
 

As you know, we here at Maggie's Farm advocate the peaceful, bucolic life.  Why, just this morning as BD was sloppin' the hogs, we decided we had a civic duty to warn our readers about tonight's debate and the dangers of sudden shocks to the central nervous system and the inherent possibility of stroke or even heart attack.

And, well, we don't want any heart attacks, now, do we?

Of course we don't.

Hence the warning.

(pulling up stool next to campfire)

Ah, I remember it like it was yesterday.

I sat there mesmerized.

I'd never really been into politics, like knowing who the key players and power brokers are, or how the great machine we call 'Washington DC' really works.  I'd never watched C-SPAN and probably couldn't have picked five senators out of a police lineup — just to pick the nearest analogy.

But I was thinking of getting into something new when suddenly the John Roberts judiciary hearings came up (when the Senate Judiciary Committee vetted him for the Supreme Court), so I thought I'd tune in.

Each senator on the committee spoke in turn, and I thought Senator John Cornyn's speech was just about the most impressive thing I'd ever heard in my life.  Sitting there as Mr. Average American Voter — who knew a little about politics, but not much — I was quite impressed with the erudition and import of each senator's opening remarks.

But then he spoke.
 

And I can remember sitting there just entranced at the sight and sound of this man.  The posture, the face, the penetrating eyes, the timbre of his voice.  The vibrational intensity he exuded.  The charisma.

I thought at the time,

This guy has 'president' written all over him.

I looked down at the bottom of the TV screen.

His name was Joe Biden.
 

If you happened to miss the first presidential debate last night, I have some advice for you: If you read any of the analyses out there today, take them with a mountain of salt.

I spent three hours this morning reading so-called analyses and have yet to find one that even remotely borders on objective and impartial.  Everybody's a homer.  To the Left and the MSM, Obama clearly won with his natural brilliance.  To the Right, McCain 'crushed' Obama with ease.

And pigs can fly.

Despite what appears to be a deeply-seated human need for a 'winner' in every contest, I don't see debates that way.  And, given how the Lefties all saw Obama as the winner and the Righties all saw McCain as the winner, I'd say that feeling is somewhat justified.

However, if you demanded a verdict from me, I'd call it a draw.  Here's how I saw them balancing out:

• McCain used the phrase "What Senator Obama doesn't understand is..." a number of times to great effect, then launching into a mini-tutorial on just what Big O doesn't understand.  This was the primary point the Righties were crowing about this morning, and it was obviously the basic strategy employed by Team McCain.  As I said, it was extremely effective.  By the third or fourth time, it actually tilted the event from "debate" slightly toward "lecture" in a very subliminal, but powerful, way.  In the lexicon of the day, it was downright Rovian.
   
• On the other hand, Obama has a much better stage presence, stands tall and erect, shows passion when he needs to and has a voice that's ten times more presidential-sounding than McCain's.  Yes, yes, I understand that to a pundit these are all 'empty suit' gestures, but I don't care how pundits view it.  They're smart enough to nuance the discrepancies; the average American voter is not.  Half the people who watched it probably saw a doddering old man past his prime and the energy and passion of the young bull ready to take the lead, and the other half saw a calm and experienced elder statesman lecturing the young pup on the basics, grooming him for his own presidency four years hence.  The intricate details of the subject matter that the bloggers blather on about are lost on the average joe.

They both upset their base in (at least) two ways:

• McCain reminded us that he's a total wuss when it comes to good old-fashioned torture, and reminded us that the poor polar bears are dying by the thousands and we need to take drastic action immediately. (he didn't actually mention the polar bears by name — I'm just extrapolating)
   
• Obama made some fairly strong statements regarding the military, something along the lines of "If we have to take military action, we will!"  I'm sure that went over big with the anti-war crowd.  He then floored the greenies by saying something like "And, yes, we need to develop nuclear power," with the "yes" aimed directly at the anti-nuke crowd, as in, "Yes, you morons, we need to..."

 
On my site, I have a post about my adventures with Hurricane Charley.  It opens with this:
 

  
First, let us establish my credentials.  Do I have the right to opine on hurricanes?  A fair and legitimate question.

I used to live in Lakeland, Florida.  Granted, Lakeland's not very big, and most people wouldn't be able to locate it on a Florida map.

It is, however, relatively easy to find, depending upon just which type of Florida map you use.  Using the following map, simply follow the dotted lines:
 

 
Any other questions about my hurricane credentials?
 

 
Well, times have certainly changed.  A year ago I bought a boat to live aboard and moved (floated, actually) down to the Florida Keys and the Tropical Island Paradise™ of Key Largo.

Granted, Key Largo's not very big, and most people wouldn't be able to locate it on a Florida map.

It is, however, relatively easy to find, depending upon just which type of Florida map you use.  Using the following map, simply follow the dotted line:
  

An encapsulation of what I saw over a 12-hour period last Friday.

First off, I gots me some street cred on this Palin thing:

 
comment, Maggie's Farm, July 16, on who should be VP
 

Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, no question.  There's your neocon vote and there's your Hillary vote.  At the slow-but-steady rate Obama is sinking, come November it'd be a landslide.  Like the MSM, people are just dying to leave the issue of race behind.  People would be positively giddy as they focused on gender again, but this time with an authentically personable figure, rather than the shrill Mrs. Clinton or the stiff, tightly-hairbunned Mrs. McCain.
 

As I said to Bird Dog the other day, while that's certainly not the first blog comment to recommend Palin for VP, it might be the first to dare use the words "Palin" and landslide in the same paragraph.  I suggest in this article that this overt optimism might yet be justified.

As such, I thought some of you might be interested in the observations I made this past Friday.  It was a historic day on a couple of levels, and, as I'll show, Governor Palin was more than just a 'smart' pick.  I doubt the McCain camp, itself, knows how truly inspired it was.  And while the bloggers did superb work getting the info out, I think they were a little too busy to see the bigger picture and what really happened that eventful day.

Let's start with landslide.

A big coonskin hat tip to commenter Roy Lofquist for the idea.

The Bill Hayes version of 'The Ballad of Davy Crockett' I listened to 50 years ago is here.  Give it a listen.  The following keeps to the general storyline of the song (including the sad 3rd verse) and will be much more enjoyable if you do.

And away we go!

The Ballad of Sarah Palin

Born on a mountain by the Yukon Sea
Oiliest state in the land of the free
Raised with a gun so she knew philosophy
And kilt a caribou when she was only three.

Sarah, Sarah Palin!  Queen of the wild frontier!

She fought single-handed in the beauty pageant war
Till the blondes was whipped and big hair restored
And while she was handling this 'permanent' chore
She made herself a brunette forevermore.

Sarah, Sarah Palin!  Dressin' for com-pa-ny!

When her child had Down's, her grief was gall
The Dems said Sarah, just abort it all
And lose yourself in the glacier tall
But she answered instead the motherhood's call.

Sarah, Sarah Palin!  Spirit of democracy!

She went to the capital and served a spell
Pluggin' up the pork and corruption as well
Took over Juneau so we hear tell
And told the Bridge To Nowhere to go to hell!

Sarah, Sarah Palin!  Servin' her country well!

John McCain called and said you ain't done
This here election has just begun
So she packed up her laptop and her virtual gun
And lit out a'smilin' for Washington.

Sarah, Sarah Palin!  Leadin' the blogoneers!

Her land is biggest, and her land is best
From grassy plains to the mountain crest
She's ahead of us all in meetin' the test
We're followin' her legend right out of the West.

Sarah, Sarah Palin!  Queen of the wild frontier!