My grandfather, Jesse Augustus Perkins (Oct 18, 1872 – Apr 19, 1951), was an engineer on the Central of Georgia Railway.

The family moved back and forth between Columbus, GA where my mom was born to Savannah, GA where she graduated high school.

Then the family did an amazing thing. They sent my mom to Brenau for a year. Sounds like a theme you might see in a novel of Anne Rivers Siddons. I can just imagine what a financial commitment this must have been for the family.

Jesse retired at age 65 and went fishing every day after that. Within three years he had turned into an old man.

As we approach retirement we should plan to stay engaged in mind and body. Our choices today are much wider than in my grandfather’s time. Blogging is a choice I wanted to explore. I had no idea what a blog is. At last I found out that a blog is shorthand for a weblog. Wow, that cleared it up. So, what is a weblog?

Then on one of my trips to Fort Collins, CO I wandered into the public library. There was a book “Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation that’s Changing Your World” ISBN 0-7852-8804X published in 2005 written by Hugh Hewitt. I wanted answers to the following questions:

• How is a Blog different from a website?
• What client software is used to create a blog?
• Does any client blog software run on Linux?

I had already done a 35 page website, all hand-coded HTML using only the IBM OS/2 Warp Enhanced Editor to create it.

Instead of finding answers to any of these questions I found out instead what horrid people liberals are. Bloggers were going to expose corruption among liberal politicians, etc.

One thing I did learn from the Hewitt book is that blogs link to other blogs and thus each multiplies the power of those other blogs.

During the next few years I started seeing bloggers appear on cable television. Townhall.com on the conservative side, MediaMatters.com on the liberal side. Representative examples.

Then one day I logged in to Linux Questions.org , As I was reading through the Slackware forum I saw a message with a tagline inviting folks to see a blog article on moving from Windows to Linux specifically Slackware Linux. I read the article and wrote to the author, Brian Reichert who turned out to be a great guy. Brian used Nanoblogger to create his blog, and of course it runs on Linux.

Seeing Brian’s blog raised another question. What is a blogroll? I flirted with Nanoblogger for months before deciding that it was not for me. Soon afterwards I decided on a domain name kakoluri.com and registered it through A2Hosting in Ann Arbor, MI. A2 is a linux friendly hosting company. Their service has been superior in every way.

Eventually I learned that there is a Linux version of WordPress

WordPress runs on the host as a MySQL task. Instead of just starting a blog, I decided to find out about MySQL. The client software is included with Slackware Linux so I was able to get MySQL running on a localhost. In order for this to work you also have to have PHP running. In Slackware this is easy. You simply edit one text file to turn PHP on.

Where does the name kakoluri come from? I was reading a book about the Gypsies. Kako is a word which means chief and Luri is an old name for the Gypsy people. I promise that I am not from Romania nor do I have any ancestors from there.

When I was a child Adolph Hitler murdered six million Jews in concentration camps. This is well-known. Some people forget that Hitler also murdered hundreds of thousands of Gypsies in Europe as well. So I feel comfortable identifying with them.

With the choice of WordPress blog software, A2 Hosting, and a registered domain name, I was soon off and running. I found out what a blogroll is by accident. So the pieces started coming together.

Now with a few months of blogging experience under my belt, I found, almost by accident another book which answers the questions that the Hewitt book did not.

The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging, ISBN 978-4391-0500-9, published in 2008, avoids the adolescent ranting of the Hewitt book. It answers the real questions I have today.

• What should I blog about?
• How should I link to other blogs?
• How can I promote readership?

I blog about what I am passionate about. Microsoft ,
for example. These days it is quaint to think that computing should require some effort and study in order to do it successfully and safely. Microsoft has sold snake oil that says any idiot can run a computer if they use Windows. The worst thing about Microsoft is the kind of users they create – according to one author.

I am passionate about RealID. A national identification card is illegal in the United States. Despite that, governments, federal and state, have spent millions of dollars on a scheme to create a de facto national identification card.

The Huffington Post Guide says do not let perfect be the enemy of done. I get ideas from C-Span and other sources but if I delay very long it is too late. Despite that, I never run out of things to blog about. Somewhere along the line I decided to include a book of the week series. Now I’m busier than ever.

Posted by Gypsy Chief

Death Panel Idol

Dog days, mid August. Congress is out, health care reform is a hot topic. This is a great time to scare seniors with talk of death panels and euthanasia. These imaginary death panels seem to be the work of Betsy McCaughey, a thinktanker at the right-leaning Hudson Institute.

There is a provision in one of the health care bills that says doctors may be compensated by Medicare for the time they spend counselling patients on end of life decisions like Living Wills, Advanced Health Care Directives and such. It takes an evil imagination to twist a noncontroversial idea – seniors should make end of life decisions ahead of time – into some sinister plot to have the government pick who gets health care or not.

Your Gypsy Chief blogger will be 73 next month. Procrastination has been a life issue with me. But the bullshit being foisted off on seniors by Betsy McCaughey, Sarah Palin, Chuck Grassley and friends didn’t make me scared – it made me mad.

Mad enough to do something about it. First thing is we’re all going to die. Recognize that fact. Make it easier on those you leave behind by making your wishes known now, before you fall into a vegatative state.

Second, I don’t feel that I need counselling by a doctor in order to determine what end of life options are best for me.

For me, a consideration is do I want to live a little longer with tubes sticking out until the money is gone, or would I rather leave something for my kids to inherit.

I am so mad about this death panel stuff that I decided to stop procrasting and make a Living Will. I went to LegalZoom.com . The proces is very easy and straightforward. You can save a partially completed worksheet and return to it later. It took me less than half an hour to get the whole thing done.

That is how I beat the Betsy McCaughey – Sarah Palin – Chuck Grassley death panel.

Two other points to be made. People who deliberately make stuff up like these false death panels should not be considered as having a credible voice in the health care debate. I think that news directors make a huge mistake by allowing folks like Betsy McCaughey to have any air time when they have proved they do not deserve it. News directors do so to ‘present the other side of the story’. But that is just nonsense. The story is do we or do we not want to provide Medicare reimbursement for doctors to consult with patients on end of life decisions like Living Wills.

Final point. People think they can scare seniors by using loaded terms like death panels and forced euthanasia. Not all seniors are dumb enough or so poorly informed as to fall for such tactics.

Posted by Gypsy Chief

Photo Credit: Paula Abdul Death Panel photo is the work of Mike Licht. See http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/

NYSE: MCD 3 Month Chart

There is an Internet spoof going on. Do not fall for it. You get an email promising to add $200 to your account for filling out an eight question survey. As with email like this I turned on full message headers and forwarded it to spoof@mcdonalds.com. Two days later I got an unknown user message from the MAILER DAEMON. There is no email user at mcdonalds dot com known as spoof. Thinking this strange I logged on to McDonaldsto take a look. Buried deep within the site is a notice that McDonald’s is aware of this Internet spoof and is ‘investigating’ . This tells me that McDonald’s does not seek the public’s help in tracking down these criminals.

What Corporate Social Responsibility?

McDonald’s has zero corporate social responsibility for the spoof. This does not mean that they do not have a problem. By not enlisting the public’s help it seems to me that McDonald’s management exhibits a tone deafness to the real world we live in. It sure would not take much action for them to create an email user known as spoof to provide a place for the public to forward spoof emails.

Tracking Down Criminals

Win $200 With McDonald’s
Monday, February 9, 2009 6:31 AM
From McDonald`s Mon Feb 9 14:31:38 2009
Return-Path:
Authentication-Results: mta191.mail.mud.yahoo.com from=McDonalds.com; domainkeys=neutral (no sig); from=McDonalds.com; dkim=neutral (no sig)
Received: from 222.227.72.67 (EHLO ns.sjc-sendai.co.jp) (222.227.72.67) by mta191.mail.mud.yahoo.com with SMTP; Mon, 09 Feb 2009 06:43:25 -0800
Received: from User (static-70-100-8-246.br1.blu.wv.frontiernet.net [70.100.8.246]) (authenticated) by ns.sjc-sendai.co.jp (8.11.6p2/8.11.6) with ESMTP id n19EfLa15109; Mon, 9 Feb 2009 23:41:21 +0900
Message-Id: <200902091441.n19EfLa15109@ns.sjc-sendai.co.jp>
From:
“McDonald`s”

This is a portion of the full message headers I got.
Here is the actual link. Note that it does not point to McDonalds.
To access the form please click the link below :
“nofollow” href=”http://paupas.com/McDonalds/index.htm” target=”_blank”>http://www.McDonalds.com/online.survey/index.html
Who are they? In any event, I hope someone shuts them down. Sorry to see that McDonalds does not seek our help.

AARP Weighs In
Here is a good story from AARP with some details of this and other scams.
AARP Scam Alert
There are several good links as well.
Posted by The GNUinator