Jack Manassas and Company

This happened in the early 1960’s, when I was 5 years old. My older brother was 8, and used to run around the woods near our home with a group of boys that called themselves ‘The Snipers Club.’   I doubt that any of them knew what a sniper was, or actually did.   I am pretty sure they got it from an episode of Combat on TV (“Starring Vic Morrow and Rick Jason…”).   It was a mysterious and powerful name, so it suited them just fine.   I wanted to follow them everywhere they went, but was mostly not allowed access to the important matters of 8-year-olds roaming the primeval forests near our suburb of Northern Virginia .   This Summer day, however, was different. My big brother actually came looking for ME.   “Ya gotta help us!” he said, near panic.   “The Eagles have challenged us to a tree-climbing contest.   We want you to climb the tree for the Snipers!”    It was well known that I was the best tree-climber in the...

Lord of the Rings Trump Knock Knock Jokes Today in his blog, ‘Clusterfuck Nation,’ James Kunstler mentioned (in comments about US Political gyrations) that “… . This melodrama will make  The Lord of the Rings   look like a knock-knock joke.” http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/whirling-whirling/ Since this is an I dea W hose T ime H as C ome, it falls to me to make the first few of them and start this giant ball of s…. -ahem- snow- rolling down hill; Knock Knock Who’s there? Sauron Sauron who? If you’re ‘Sour-on’ Trump, wait till you see what P resident Chthulhu does in 2020 ! KK WT Bilbo Bilbo who? Bill bo’ got away with Monica, why are you complaining about Trump so much? KK WT Mount Doom Mount Doom who? ‘ Doom’ is about the only thing our politicians HAVEN’T mounted in the last 40 years… KK WT Gollum Gollum who? The District of GOLLUMbia does Precious little to help any of us t...

Running HR Block 2017 Tax Software in Ubuntu Linux  Using CodeWeavers Crossover 2017 US taxes are due to be filed by midnight on April 18, 2018. It will surprise no one that a lot of people have waited to the last minute to start filing. At 9:30 PM, I got a call from a young relative who needed to do his taxes for the first time ever. He is a Linux enthusiast, and does not have a Windows or Apple/Mac computer. I thought I would try installing HR Block 2017 Tax Software on the Linux side of my laptop. 1) Obtain and install Codeweavers Crossover for Linux This software allows you to run many Windows apps in Linux-- https://www.codeweavers.com/ 2) Download the HR Block Windows tax software package. This year, its available from www.hrblock.com/2017/DELUXEWIN You will need an activation code, which should be provided when you buy the package. The default download location is /home/yourname/Downloads/ The app’s ...

Installing FreeMind to Ubuntu Linux I wanted to install mind-mapping software to my Ubuntu Linux laptop.  I used to use FreeMind a couple of years ago, and liked it.  “No problem,” I thought.  “I will just fire up Ubuntu Software and install it from there.”  But FreeMind was not on the Ubuntu Software list. “OK, I will get it through Synaptic Package Manager (SPaM),” I said to myself, feeling smug because A) SPaM has every Linux program under the sun (and quite a few from other star systems too), and B) I know that SPaM exists, AND I had already installed it.  However, FreeMind did not appear, even in SPaM. It had become a mystery. I was able to install the .deb package from SourceForge for FreeMind 0.8.1.  This is not the most recent version;  V 10 is available for Windows… In Terminal CLI, I tried switching to the Downloads directory, then installing with dpkg;  ~$  cd Downloads ~$  sudo dpkg –i freemind_0.8.1-2_all.deb ...