My son turns sixteen tomorrow. Forgive me for wallowing in cliched sentimentality, but it seems like yesterday that they let us go home with this red, wrinkled creature without supervision. It seems like yesterday that we laughed till we couldn’t breathe the first time he really laughed that kind of laugh that leaves you exhausted. It seems like yesterday that my wife got a little mad at me when I sat him upright in the shopping cart seat because she thought he was too little, and I didn’t. It seems like yesterday that I took him to see the first of the new Star Wars movies. It wasn’t all just yesterday. It’s been sixteen years. Holy crap.

Matt is smarter than me. I don’t feel bad because he’s smarter than most people I know, which still leaves lots of room for my ego. My wife and I used to tell new parents that among all the other blessings that come with parenthood, what a trip it was to hold a conversation with your kid as if you were talking to another adult. In hindsight, we may have thrown those people a little curve ball because we were enjoying such conversations with Matt much sooner than I’m sure most parents do.

Though there are occasions where a subtle expression or comment makes it known that he’s merely tolerating our nonsense, Matt’s humility and respect of us and other adults is remarkable. When experience and God-established authority trumps his own understanding, Matt says, “Yes sir.” When Matt is introduced to someone, he looks them in the eye and gives a firm handshake. He hugs his parents no matter who’s watching. He has always gotten straight A’s. He’s the funniest person I’ve ever known. He’s an incredible drummer. Matt’s appreciation of movies, food, music, and books has always been that of a person well beyond his years. I’ve watched him learn to do things in a fraction of the time it would take a normal person. Sometimes I don’t get him. Sometimes it’s like God pushed the rewind button on my life.

My wife and I have had some fun with him repeating a Homer Simpson quote for years. “When you’re eighteen you’re outta here!” It’s not funny anymore. College is still a couple years off. Even still, I have to choke back tears just thinking about it. That day will possess epic suck. I love him so much and miss him already.

This is my blog. It’s supposed to be about me. Trust me, it is. I want what most guys want. Among other things, I want to leave a legacy. I want an imprint of who I am to be left when I’m gone. If I got hit by a bus tomorrow and the world knew me through my sixteen-year-old son, I couldn’t be more blessed. Happy birthday Matt.

First off, this is for Ubuntu 9.04…ymmv on other flavors and versions of Ubuntu.

If you have the open source edition (OSE) of VirtualBox installed, you’ll need to remove it and install the proprietary version. This is necessary for the USB pass-through. I’m using VirtualBox 2.2.24. If you’re using Ubuntu, you can do this through the Synaptic Package Manager or through the command:

jjones@dads-pc:~$ sudo apt-get install virtualbox-2.2

Install XP on the virtual machine. Update your service packs, etc and install iTunes. I disabled some services from automatically starting to keep the boot-up relatively quick. I also used VirtualBox’s shared folders feature to keep all my music in Linux and share it with the VM. I just mapped a network drive in XP and imported that folder into my iTunes library. Next, make sure you have USB enabled. Go to Settings->USB.

You’ll also want to setup a USB filter to have the iPhone passed through to the virtual machine. With the iPhone plugged in, click the button to add a new filter and choose the iPhone.

Once you get this up and running, you’ll find that plugging your iPhone in will cause Ubuntu to mount it as a camera. XP may or may not see it too. But iTunes won’t see it until until you unmount the iPhone camera in Ubuntu. It would be good at this point to make sure that’s the case. I came across a great post on the Ubuntu forums that gave a slick way to supress the automounting of the iPhone as a camera without turning off automounting of removal media altogether. It involves creating a HAL policy to ignore when the iPhone is detected. the HAL daemon actually sees two devices when the phone is plugged in. We need to grab the IDs of both. You can do this by grepping through the output of the command:

jjones@dads-pc:~$ sudo hal-device

We’ll use the values for each ‘info.udi’. Here’s a little snippet that should grab what we need:

jjones@dads-pc:~$ hal-device | grep Apple -A 36 | grep info.udi
info.udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_5ac_1294_bcc2f6da7f53acb1b65d03d87c7bf1ac0748faeb' (string)
info.udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/net_00_50_56_c0_00_08' (string)


Next, create a file like /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-noiphone.fdi (”noiphone” is arbitrary…you can name it whatever you like) with the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="info.udi" string="$info.udi1">
       <merge key="info.ignore" type="bool">true</merge>

    </match>
  </device>
  <device>
    <match key="info.udi" string="$info.udi2">
       <merge key="info.ignore" type="bool">true</merge>

    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

• where $info.udi1 = first info.udi value from hal-device search
• where $info.udi2 = second info.udi value from hal-device search

I needed to reboot to see this take effect. But afterwards, you should be able to plug in your iPhone without it being mounted in Ubuntu as a camera. If you have USB enabled and a filter set up, XP and iTunes should have no trouble detecting the phone.

If you’re like me and intend to use the XP virtual machine for iTunes only, here’s a way to have your virtual XP loaded automatically when the iPhone is attached and unloaded when removed. Here’s how:

Get the id of the virtual machine running XP:

jjones@dads-pc:~$ VBoxManage list vms


Create the following two scripts substituting my vm id and other info with your own:

/usr/local/bin/iphone_attach.sh

#!/bin/bash
export XAUTHORITY=/home/jjones/.Xauthority
export DISPLAY=:0.0
su jjones -c "/usr/bin/VBoxManage startvm 376e6b19-1602-4e73-bc7e-7248c49be9a3" >> /var/log/iphone.log

/usr/local/bin/iphone_remove.sh

#!/bin/bash
export XAUTHORITY=/home/jjones/.Xauthority
export DISPLAY=:0.0
su jjones -c "/usr/bin/VBoxManage controlvm 376e6b19-1602-4e73-bc7e-7248c49be9a3 acpipowerbutton" >> /var/log/iphone.log

Set the executable bit on these scripts:
jjones@dads-pc:~$ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/iphone_*

With the iPhone unplugged, run the following command:

jjones@dads-pc:~$ sudo udevadm monitor --environment


Plug in the iPhone and take note of the output of udevadm. We’re looking for line similar to:

PRODUCT=5ac/1294/1


Lastly, create the file:
/etc/udev/rules.d/98-iphone.rules

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{PRODUCT}=="5ac/1294/1", ACTION=="add", RUN+="/usr/local/bin/iphone_attach.sh"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{PRODUCT}=="5ac/1294/1", ACTION=="remove", RUN+="/usr/local/bin/iphone_remove.sh"

Again, substitute the appropriate values for your own stuff.

Now when you plug in your iPhone, your VirtualBox XP machine should load automatically and autorun iTunes when booted up. When you remove the iPhone, XP detects an ACPI shutdown and closes. Enjoy!

Our Tax System Explained: “Bar Stool Economics”

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go
something like this:

The first four men (The poorest) would pay nothing.

The fifth would pay $1.

The sixth would pay $3.

The seventh would pay $7.

The eighth would pay $12.

The ninth would pay $18.

The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.” Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.

But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’ They
realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up
being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).

The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).

The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).

The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).

The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).

The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare
their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20,”declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,” but he got $10!” “Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth
man. “I only saved a dollar, too It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!” “That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back
when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!” “Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The
system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most
benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start
drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

Let me say, I consider myself to be as fearless as the next guy. I used to climb poles and handle 13,000 volts for a living. I spar with professional fighters. I’ve even dutifully stood by while the Mrs. was bra shopping at the mall. But I’m scared of hornets…I hate them. I’ve been stung many times in the process of changing lightbulbs in streetlights for ten years. It may be my imagination, but it hurts worse and swells more each time.

So I moved to the middle of the canoe and carefully squatted down to get underneath and try and catch a glimpse of any nest-building going on in the front of the canoe. I squat-shuffled about two steps and inadvertently unpaused the song on my phone that I was blaring on the way home from church through my bluetooth stereo. Skillet’s Rebirthing broke the tense silence and nearly gave me a heart attack! It was loud enough that it vibrated in my pocket and added that extra hornet-like effect to the brief panic and disorientation.

Here’s the song that nearly killed me today.

The old blog was a nice java webapp called Pebble. I loved that it was java-based, but I wasn’t nuts about the XML vs database storage. I chose it because my job is very java-centric and I intended to mess with it a little. Never happened. Since the new host didn’t offer java, it didn’t kill me to switch to the much more mature Wordpress. Hence the different look. I’m really digging the features of WP too. Let me know what you think. I didn’t bring users and comments over, so apologies if you have to re-register.

Subscribers to RSS may have had the feed hiccup for a few days. I set up an alias to the new feed, but the current feed is now http://www.bognet.org/?feed=rss2.

Today I watched a video clip from CNN in which a reporter was on the scene and interviewing a participant in one of the many tea parties held yesterday. Not unlike some of the other on-camera and animated breaches in pretense of objectivity I've seen on CNN or other networks, this woman literally scolded a man for daring to protest the Federal government's recent and obscene spending, rather than allowing him to answer the question of, "why are you here?". She was quickly shouted down by the crowd before being permitted to complete her absurd defense of Obama's stimulus bill to this man. With that, she sent it back to the studio and cast the crowd as having been influenced by the "right-wing" Fox News Channel.

In the past, I've proudly accepted the term right-winger, or belonging to the right-wing, or even being part of the "vast, right-wing conspiracy." But lately, I've come to somewhat resent the term. Don't get me wrong – I am not at all ashamed of holding a conservative view. Far from it. It's what's implied by the term that's beginning to bug me.

The terms left-wing and right-wing have long been accepted ways to describe the political views of politicians and politically outspoken people. I think the mental image that one might conjure is linear in nature. The left side represents the views of bigger government and higher taxes. The right side represents smaller government and lower taxes. The further out on each side logically represents the more entrenched, pure, or "extreme" views of each side. The center, or mainstream then, is naturally the least extreme and most compromising view one could hold.

This is BS. The origin of these terms is from the seating arrangements in the French legislative assemblies of the 1700s. While the meanings of the terms have evolved, even within the scope of French and European use, they adequately represent the political spectrum in the French Revolutionary era. But we're not French politicians in parliament. This is the United States of America. Our forefathers, through unthinkable sacrifice and in recognition of the unalienable rights bestowed upon every man by his Creator, established this country on the very principles that are routinely cast as right-wing and extreme today. Our government and rule of law was brilliantly conceived to provide the best chance at preservation of these principles and unalienable rights. This is what has made the United States of America the greatest and most successful nation on the planet.

I'm not interested in squelching the voices of those who believe a permanent or even a temporary departure from those original, conservative principles are in order. You can't do that and be a true conservative. But conservatives should no longer accept that a desire for smaller government, lower taxes, and free market capitalism is anything but exactly what this country was intended to be. Conservatism is not to the right of the mainstream. It IS the mainstream!

Big government liberalism has strongholds in academia and media and is succeeding at redefining what is considered mainstream. Power-hungry statists are succeeding at not only governing apart from the constitution and it's founding principles, they are engineering the very tyranny from which our forefathers escaped – high taxes, income redistribution, and the current state religions of multiculturalism, environmentalism, and globalism. It's time for Americans to wake up and defend the only true rights that exist – the ones God gave us.

The Republican Party has simply done a miserable job of representing conservatism over the last decade. Any civic-minded, college-aged adult who has formed an opinion on notable conservatives and conservatism during this time has undoubtedly done so on the basis of complete lies and misinformation. To say that there is a liberal bias in their sources of information or discourse is a gross understatement. What's worse, there has been no consistent, foundational message of conservatism as the necessary contrast for thinking people to reason out a position. Over the weekend, that message seems to have shown signs of life with the help of Rush Limbaugh.

Barack Obama has poured greasy fat on the already slippery slope politicians have created over the last decade. Even France thinks Obama's recently passed economic 'stimulus' bill is too socialist. France!! It looks like the smackdown the GOP received last November coupled with the nearly unbelievable government spending in only the first six weeks of unchecked, liberal policy-making might have been what the GOP needed to recover from it's own drunken stupor. Conservatives have hopefully recognized the true threat to our country now. The Left has and will continue to portray Rush as a hate-filled, cartoon character to try and discredit the messenger of a great message. Don't believe it. If you've got the time, check out his address to CPAC 2009. It's the kind of message that's been missing, and frankly what people need to hear to make rational choices for our leaders going forward.

Here are the links in case the facebook feed drops the embedded video:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10

The phrase “fix our eyes on Jesus” brought to mind a documentary I had seen about our mind’s capacity to process the images captured by our eyes. When our vision is focused on something, our mind has difficulty processing information outside of that focus. This was demonstrated to great comedic effect using the television audience. Two basketball teams, identified by different colored jerseys and each with their own ball were spread out on a court in no particular formation. Dark-colored jerseys were mixed with light-colored jerseys. The challenge presented to the audience was to count the number of passes between the light-colored jerseys only. Much later in the documentary, the host returned to this demonstration to point out that while we were counting the number of passes from just one team, a man in a gorilla suit walked right through the players! When the video was replayed, I couldn’t understand how I could have possibly missed the gorilla.

While we may have some fun with the idea that we missed something we should have seen, if our lives depended on counting the correct number of passes, that gorilla would have appropriately been viewed as a distraction – a costly one.

In these difficult times, many of us are coping with a number of distractions. It’s important for us to keep these troubles in appropriate perspective. We can do this by fixing our eyes on Jesus Christ. This is how we tap into the power available to us to endure hardship. This is how we run the race and share in the victory that Jesus already won. The joy set before Christ is the same joy set before us because of Christ. It is eternal communion with God the Father. Let’s keep our eyes on the Prize.

If you have a blog and have made a similar consideration, or if your time is so invaluable that you've actually taken the time to read my increasingly rare posts, let me know what you think.