Well, I have spent most of this evening trying to get Easy CD Creator 5.0 Platinum to RUN under Windows XP. It seems the CRAPPY program has issues with XP that I am not willing to discuss with the computer tonight, so thank goodness I also purchased NERO a while back (which by the way is currently burning the first CD I was wanting to burn in the first place). I downloaded Mandrake 8.2 this weekend (all three CD’s) and am currently burning them so I can upgrade my Linux machine to 8.2. Nice nice nice. I love Mozilla and Xchat and have found it quite easy for this “Windows” geek to learn Linux. Now if I could just remember the stuff I learn, I will be ahead of the game. :)

I am off to the “Linux world” for the evening, take care.

I hope you all had a happy Easter.

The inevitable has happened. Britain’s Queen Mother, Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyons, has passed away at the age of 101.

She was born on August 4, 1900. To put her age into perspective, you must understand that she was 3 when the Wright Brothers flew for the first time, she was 14 at the outbreak of World War ONE, she was 16 when the Russian Revolution began, and she was 22 when she married the future King of England, George VI on April 23, 1923.

There is so much that could be said for this remarkable woman, and I am sure we will all hear tributes this week, as the traditional 9 day mourning period begins.

I bid farewell to one of the most remarkable women of the 20th century, of any century.

UPDATE: Kevin’s Blog has a wonderful timeline of events.

While surfing through my favorite blogs tonight, I came across this entry from Brad Choate regarding Thomas Pacheco.

Thomas is a bright little seven year old. He’s the son of a close friend, Ron Pacheco. And he’s been diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer.

Brad has asked us ALL to spend some time at the site to get to know Thomas, and to spread the word however we can. Well, consider yourself bread, and the word was the peanut butter. :)

We are all pulling (and praying) for you Thomas. You have a wonderful soul, an awesome attitude, and the love of thousands of people you don’t even know.

Apparently Mr. Arafat hung up on a CNN reporter. Here is my favorite part:

AMANPOUR: Are you able to rein in the violence?

ARAFAT: You have to be accurately when you are speaking with General Yasser Arafat. Be quiet!

NOTE TO MS AMANPOUR: Be more accurate.

First you must ask him if he is in control of the Palestinians. He will say yes, the truth is NO.

Second you must ask him if he is against the violence of the suicide bombers. He will say yes, the answer is NO.

Finally, you ask him if he can rein in the violence. He will say yes, but we all know the answer is NO.

MY POINT: Does anyone (Israeli or Palestinian) really trust Arafat anymore? He will say yes, but the answer is NO.

Am I taking the Israeli’s side in this “conflict”. My answer is NO, and it means NO. I am just taking an ANTI-ARAFAT stance. Replace him, and I bet peace will come to the region. Just watch.

WOOHOO! Friday. I remembered. It’s not five yet. WOOHOO!

1. If you could eat dinner with and “get to know” one famous person (living or dead), who would you choose? Anwar Sadat.

2. Has the death of a famous person ever had an effect on you? Who was it and how did you feel? Harry Truman, in 1972. I still remember it clearly. I remember hearing the news and thinking how sad it was that someone (especially a President) died on the day after Christmas.

3. If you could BE a famous person for 24 hours, who would you choose? Hmmm. It would be kewl to be Magellan. Yeah. That’s good.

4. Do people ever tell you that you look like someone famous? Who? Naw.

5. Have you ever met anyone famous? Quite a few. When I used to hang out at the Riviera (in Vegas). My favorite though, was Tommy Smothers. A TRUE intellectual.

I just got a message via MSNBC News Alert that Billy Wilder has passed away at 95.

He directed such classic hits as The Major and the Minor, Double Indemnity, A Foreign Affair, Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17 (inspiration for TV’s Hogan’s Heroes), Sabrina (the original), The Seven Year Itch, The Spirit Of St. Louis, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, and The Front Page (one of my all time favorites).

I found a good article today by Ellen Goodman that I thought was a very good read.

I know. The motion picture academy and the “academy” of university scholars are as different as apples and oranges or Oscars and Ph.D.s. But that’s the point. We don’t have a single or even a double standard of truth for history; we have more standards than there are movie ratings.

For Goodwin, sloppiness is cast as a career breaker. For Howard, a deliberate distortion of biography is a career maker. In one academy, a bad mistake is a capital cause; in the other Academy, editing and rewriting truth into falsehood is “just a movie.”

This is exactly what I was stating a few entries ago.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 28 (UPI) — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat told Arab leaders meeting in Beirut that Israel was preparing to launch a large-scale attack within hours against Palestinian territories, according to Arafat’s foreign minister, Faruk Qaddumi, on Thursday.

AT LEAST THEY KNOW SOMEONE IS COMING TO ATTACK THEM.

What a find! After all these months worrying about a bioterrorist attack we are now led to believe we might be safer than we thought, if we act fast.

A pharmaceutical company has discovered 70 million to 90 million long-forgotten doses of smallpox vaccine in its freezers, instantly increasing the known U.S. inventory of the vaccine six-fold and ensuring the nation an adequate supply in the event of a bioterrorist attack, according to government sources familiar with the find.

BUT, are we really any safer?

That does not mean it will be easy to defend against such an attack or that deaths would be rare. The vaccine must be given within a few days after exposure to smallpox, posing a logistical nightmare if outbreaks were to occur in several locations simultaneously. Smallpox has historically killed about a third of those it infects.

Another problem is that both the Wyeth and Aventis vaccines can be deadly in people whose immune systems are suppressed by AIDS or other diseases or as a result of their taking drugs for cancer or organ transplantation. In fact, such patients are at risk of life-threatening vaccinia infection simply by coming in contact with others who have been vaccinated, since live viruses are shed from the injection site on the arm.

I feel safer already. Really, I do. Honest. Uh-Huh. As safe as a mouse falling down a snake hole. Don’t you?