Author Archives: Maria Langer

We The People

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A few choice Amendments from the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, for those who care about freedom. I added the italics.

Article I (The First Amendment)

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Article IV (The Fourth Amendment)

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Article V (The Fifth Amendment)

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Article VI (The Sixth Amendment)

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays?

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Another example of the religious right taking offense at nothing.

I was born and raised Catholic. I don’t practice it these days, but I still consider myself “Christian.” The winter solstice holiday I celebrate is Christmas.

Almost every year, I send out Christmas cards. Well, to be fair, they’re not all Christmas cards. Some of them are holiday cards. Because not all of my friends celebrate Christmas. Some of them are Jewish and celebrate Chanukah. And I’ll admit that I’m not even sure what some of them celebrate because I don’t go around asking my friends about their religion.

I have a collection of Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays cards. I send them out primarily based on the picture on the card or the sentiment inside the card. I don’t, however, send a Merry Christmas card to someone who I know is Jewish. Or someone who might be Jewish. I do this out of respect for their religious beliefs. After all, why should I wish them a Merry Christmas — a holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, who isn’t anyone terribly special to them — when I could wish them a Happy Holidays?

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that the wish I’d like to share is for a happy and healthy holiday season. Isn’t that what we all wish everyone this time of year?

Now I’m definitely not a supporter of George Bush Jr. In fact, I don’t like him at all. But I think he’s taking a lot of undeserved grief with the White House Christmas card debate. I think the card is fine — a Happy Holidays wish covers everyone, without offending anyone. Christmas is a Christian holiday. Not everyone who received the card is Christian. Why should it wish everyone a Merry Christmas? And what the hell is wrong with a Happy Holidays wish?

Come on guys. Is it really that important? Don’t you think homelessness, unemployment, and hunger within this country are more important than the words that appear on a White House Christmas (or Holiday) card? Yet I don’t hear any of the religious right whining about any of that.

And, for the record, it is a Christmas tree. Sheesh. What other holiday puts a pine tree (or a fake pine tree) in people’s living rooms every December?

Reason Triumphs

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The Scopes III trial ends.

From the New York Times:

HARRISBURG, PA., Dec. 20 – A federal judge ruled today that it is unconstitutional for a Pennsylvania school district to present intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in high school biology courses because intelligent design is a religious viewpoint that advances “a particular version of Christianity.”

Thank heaven! (Pun intended.) I was beginning to think the country was regressing back to a 21st century version of the Dark Ages.

I have all kinds of respect for people’s religious beliefs. Religion is important to many people. It forms the bedrock of their personal belief systems and guides their everyday actions. But when religious beliefs contradict science, I’m on the side of science.

It doesn’t bother me to imagine that I’m the product of millions of years of evolution. It doesn’t bother me to know that one of my ancestors was a squiggly thing in the ocean and another was an ape-like creature that couldn’t stand quite upright. Science has produced all kinds of theories that make evolution feasible and there is enough evidence to satisfy me. Evidently, there’s enough evidence to satisfy a judge, too.

We should be teaching science in public schools, not religion. Religion should be taught at home and at church and at church-sponsored education, like Sunday School. Parents and religious leaders are better suited to answering questions about religion. Science teachers are better suited for answering questions about science. It makes sense.

Of course, I do have a good friend who believes that the earth is only 7,000 years old. (I think that’s his number.) It doesn’t matter that there’s all kinds of scientific evidence to prove that it’s billions of years old. My friend says 7,000 years and he truly believes it. That’s part of his religion. And who am I to tell him he’s wrong?

Not a science teacher.

Anyway, I’m not surprised that the trial ended the way it did. It makes sense to me. But Mike said tonight at dinner that he was relieved. Relieved? How could it not end on the side of reason? How could a government built upon separation of church and state settle for anything less?

The Chickens in My Garage

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A report on my 10-day-old chicks.

It’s true. I have 27 chickens in my garage.

If you’ve been following this bLog, you know that I ordered a bunch of chicks to replace my current flock. The mail order house I used decided to send me a bunch of bonus chicks. It turns out that the 18 additional chicks they sent are all males.

One of the chicks that wasn’t feeling too well last week died. Another one is sick now and I’m not sure if he’s going to make it. I hope that all the ones that die are males. I don’t have much use for more than 2 roosters. And come six months from now, my neighbors won’t, either. They’re already in their second home. Their first home, a big plastic storage box that should have lasted 12 chicks a week, lasted 18 chicks exactly two days. That was replaced with a pair of gas BBQ boxes I picked up at the local Alco store. A little work with a box cutter and some packing tape gave me a pretty good sized box. I had to buy another waterer and feeder, too.

Now I know that the above picture makes it look as if the poor chicks don’t have enough room to move around. But you have to realize that they’re all piled up on each other by choice. I don’t know why. There’s a heat lamp in there, so I know they’re not cold. I think they just like to pile up. Because when I went to take a photo a few minutes ago, they were piled up like that again. It makes for a boring picture and even more boring video.I can’t even get good video when I try. I pulled a little chickie out of the box and put it on my washing machine top, figuring that it would walk around and do cute chickie stuff. But it just stood there, breathing and blinking at me. Even when I moved the camera pretty close to its face. Maybe it’s because I just woke it up? But she is cute. Too bad they have to get big.

Well, I take that back. If you were cleaning the litter for 27 chicks every morning, you’d be pretty anxious to get them out of your garage and into the chicken coop.

Only four weeks to go. And I have the next addition to their indoor coop all ready for them.

A Podcasting Update

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Maria Speaks Episode 22: A Podcasting Update.

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Maria Langer. Welcome to Episode 22 of Maria Speaks: A Podcasting Update.

I haven’t released a podcast in nearly a month and I figured I’d better put one out, just to let you all know I’m still alive and kicking. Here’s a quick update of the things I’ve been up to.

I’ve been busy, but not terribly so. I finished my QuickBooks 2006 for Macintosh book in November and got my author copy in the mail just the other day. It should be in stores within a week. If you’re looking for a book about QuickBooks for Mac, I hope you’ll look it up. I don’t think you’ll be able to look up another book on the topic — my book seems to be the only one.

I started writing my November Widget Watch piece, but got sidetracked. I’m starting to get a little bored with widgets. I hope to finish it next week and get it online as a podcast soon after that. It’ll be an enhanced podcast. Do you like those? With the screenshots and links and all?

I’ve been writing a lot of articles for Informit.com. Unfortunately, Informit doesn’t publish them as quickly as I write them. So although there are about five of them in the pipeline, I don’t expect to see the first of them for at least two weeks. Upcoming topics include Finder features, using Backup 3, and setting up an AirPort Express. I can’t remember the other topics. Heck, I can’t even remember what I had for dinner last night sometimes.

In the past, I’ve released Informit articles as podcasts and enhanced podcasts. I need to know from listeners: should I keep doing this? Do you want to hear the articles as podcasts? Or am I wasting my time and your bandwidth by creating them? You can always read the Informit articles online at the Informit.com Web site. Use the search box to search for me by author name. In case your memory is as bad as mine, the name is Maria Langer.

I’m also working on an article for Mac Addict magazine. I wrote for Mac Addict a few years ago, but I’m not the kind of person who aggressively seeks out magazine work, so I didn’t get any new assignments. (I guess they weren’t interested in seeking me out, either.) I got a call from one of the editors last week, looking for someone to write a bit about Excel for a big piece they’re doing. So I’m doing it. I like writing for Mac Addict because the magazine is fun. I assume the article will be out in the February or March issue.

I’ve begun talking to one of my editors about a brand new book that I’ll probably start writing right after the holidays. It’ll be a Mac book — that’s all I can say. And it won’t be part of any series, so I get a chance to write in a more flexible, free-form style. I love writing Visual QuickStart Guides, but they tend to keep my writing skills — such as they are — all boxed up. It’s nice to let them out for exercise once in a while.

I booked a flight and hotel room for Macworld Expo in San Francisco. I’ll be appearing in the Peachpit Press booth on the Thursday of the show, so if you’re around, I hope you’ll stop by and say hello. I’ll do a presentation about Tiger. Something interesting and fun. I’m tired of talking about productivity stuff.

I started doing video inside my helicopter while I fly. I bought a camera mount that attaches to the horizontal bar between my helicopter’s two front seats. The camera mounts about 5 inches above the bar. It faces out the front of the helicopter and the view includes the top half of my control panel, the part with the interesting gauges on it. You know — airspeed, vertical speed, artificial horizon. I’ve found that on cloudy days, the view is pretty good. Not too bright out the window to make the panel too dark to see. The best video comes during takeoff or landing or while flying in interesting places, like down canyons or alongside cliffs. The idea is to take the interesting video and turn it into a video podcast, with narration, to give people an idea of what sitting in the front seat of a helicopter is like. I need to work a bit more on the mount; the vibrations are a bit too much right now. But I hope to have a short video done soon. Is that something you want to download from Maria Speaks or should I start a separate podcast? The episode would be at least 20 MB in size. Let me know what you think. Don’t be shy.

This past week, I did the first broadcast of a live radio show. I do a lot of work for the local AM radio station here in Wickenburg, KBSZ-AM, including their Web site, Webcam, podcasts of their talk shows, and, most recently, streaming audio. That’s right — you can tune into KBSZ-AM from anywhere in the world, as long as you have a fast Internet connection. There’s a guy who listens in from Italy every single morning and when they broadcast a football game, all available connections are full. If you want to try it out, visit www.kbsz-am.com and click the Streaming Audio link. Then follow the instructions on that page to connect. I recommend weekday mornings, when Pete does his live show, as well as Saturdays, when there’s a succession of live DJs spinning disks.

Anyway, my show, Classic Rock Cuts, is on every Wednesday evening at 8 PM MST. That’s 10 PM on the east coast and 7 PM on the west coast. I did the first broadcast on Wednesday and I admit I was pretty nervous. My friend Keri — Alias Miss Holley King, the Rockabilly Queen — helped me with the tough part: dealing with the broadcasting board. We only had a handful of dead air seconds and I only played a commercial over the music once. The automatic recording of the show that I’d set up on my Web server had so much background noise that it’s worthless as a podcast, so the world will be spared from it. I think I’m ready for next week, when I feature holiday tunes from classic rock artists. I’ll use an old fashioned tape recorder to record the show and, if it isn’t too painful to listen to, release it as a podcast.

I’m looking for sponsors for the show. Peachpit Press has already signed up for a full year of one-minute spots. If you’re interested in sponsoring an entire show, e-mail me at MariaSpeaks@mac.com and I’ll get the details out to you. It’s a lot cheaper than you might think.

But the big project I’m working on is the conversion of my Panther-based, WebSTAR Web server to Mac OS X Tiger Server. I bought Tiger server because I was sick of WebSTAR’s unreliable performance and I wanted to use some of the cool features that come with Tiger Server. So at the beginning of each week, I do some installation work and spend the rest of the week debugging what I’ve done. I have a lot to learn — that’s clear. But I’m really enjoying the challenge, in a weird sort of way.

You can read more of what’s going on in my life — as well as a play-by-play of my server installation, written for the geek wannabes — in Maria’s WebLog. Visit my Home page at www.aneclecticmind.com and click the Maria’s WebLog link to find it. That’s also where you can find more about NaNoWriMo, which made me hated among novelist wannabes back in October.

Right now, I’m waiting to hear from you. What do you want to hear in these podcasts? More Mac how-to stuff? Or stories about the weird things going on in my life — like what you can find in Maria’s WebLog? Or about flying helicopters in the Arizona desert and beyond? Or all of the above? Go to the Home page for this podcast at www.aneclecticmind.com/mariaspeaks/ and use the comments link to share your thoughts.

I’m a lot more likely to churn out interesting podcasts if you tell me what you think is interesting.

That’s all for now. Thanks for listening, Bye!