I have to confess, I didn't vote until I was married, that was when I was...er....26/27?  I did not before mostly because I did not see the issues envolved as being my issues.  I mean, I was not concerned about the issues and felt there was little anyone could do about them anyway.  I was blinded, as most people are that don't vote, into thinking life was like a river that just kept rolling on and there was nothing I could do about it's course or character.

I was a selfish person thinking mostly of myself.  When I was married things changed.  I became concerned about my family, especially my children's future, and what I could do about the changes in our society that I both disagreed with and affected them.

I cannot remember the first president I voted for.  I remember the first president I conciously voted against and that was Bill Clinton.  I know I voted before him, but I just don't remember when.  I can tell you one thing I do remember.  I remember being ashamed because I had not done such a simple thing to change evil or policy in our country as the simple thing of voting.  As I stood in the box pushing the buttons I acually remember thinking that thought and wondering how my one vote might have changed the course of history before and how evil can take the upper hand by the use of such a simple thing.  Imagine the course of history if Hitler had not been voted into office?   How many lives might have been saved.  Now I wonder what evil things my children or grandchildren might not have suffered in the loss of their freedoms if I had voted.  I know you think I am dramatizing this but history has been changed by simple "one things" in the past people have been too oblivious or careless to change.

It is often said those who don't vote shouldn't complain.  It struck me how true this is.  This year at work a work mate was talking about how stupid everyone was who voted for candidates other than Obama.  He later confessed he doesn't vote at all!  Who is the stupid one?  I told him don't even talk to me about it because you are the last one I would consider to be an expert!

This year we are in a clearer position in views than perhaps ever in history.  We have two sides.  Those who want to take away American freedom by promising more vain promises to those who value their own safety and comfort, and those who want to restore American freedom even though it costs us pain, discomfort, and suffering personally.  This was the very choice our forefathers stood up for and against.  Our country was founded on the sacrifice of those who were not only willing to lose everything they had, but did in the belief that freedoms were more important than personal comfort and security.

In every government program created there is a little yielding of our rights as an individual.  The more programs created the more rights are removed from us as citizens.  If you use a government program, then you are a debtor to the government and recognize it's rule over you as an individual.  You say to the government, take care of me and I will serve you.  That is not the way our government was set up.  Our government was set up to serve us as Americans.

I hope you will see the need to vote.  Perhaps it is too late for our govenment to conform to the Constitution again.  Perhaps our Constitution now only exists as a piece of paper only and not the Ideals it represented.  In any case, things won't change for the good unless we vote.


Here's a link to Men's Monday Meme, "Families Again,"

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  I made a better use of her wifi. Somehow it automatically found her wifi and I did not have to install drivers as I had to with her previously dual-booted installation. Also, because it was somehow using her native wifi drivers, I had stronger wifi reception and was not suffering the “every few minutes” drop out in signal that had occurred with the dual-booted installation.

• Next, everything ran faster! I was happy with that. Unfortunately, as fast as Windows 7 or Ubuntu dual-booted was, neither was as fast as Wubi. Everything seemed to open faster and work faster. I am not sure how this is so, but it seems that wubi somehow disengages many things in Windows as it boots and so uses most of the Windows drivers in a faster way. I was even able to run some of the games, like GL Tron with 3d acceleration without installing the special drivers that Ubuntu was prompting me to install. In fact, the native drivers in Windows ran better than the Ubuntu Nvidia driver I installed, (and later uninstalled), from the Wubi Ubuntu installation. Flash, Java, and Movies played too with the usual extra set of drivers and steps needed for Ubuntu.

• Lastly, the installation, (and later un-install), and subsequent final install of Wubi were so simple and fast. Note, in Windows XP there are a couple of extra steps needed to uninstall Wubi that are documented on their site, but even these are not oppressive in nature. For most, uninstalling will be as simple as uninstalling any other program in Windows.

• Faster install, however, I had to delete my previous dual-booted install of Ubuntu and resize the hard drive to allow space for the Ubuntu folder added to Windows, in my case, 24GB. For my subsequent install it was much faster. How much? My final install was 15  minutes not counting reinstalling my backups.

• Should work with your native Windows drivers

• Easy to uninstall with only a couple extra steps for Windows XP.

• It leaves more space on your drive for dual-booting other operating systems. Because it boots in Windows I am not taking up that extra space setting up a parition for Ubuntu thus freeing it to be used by another Operating system like Free-bsd, Opensolaris, or any other OS I like or want to experiment with. Normally, If you want to continue using Windows 7 along side Ubuntu, then in many cases three partions will be already taken up by Windows, the restore drive, and the boot drive leaving space for only one other partition, since there is a limit of four partitions you can place on a drive. If you are using Widows XP, this can be pared down to only one partion leaving three partitions free for other operating systems. Theorically you can have five operating systems on one drive. Also, I haven't tried running a virtual OS with virtual box or vmware inside the faster Wubi installation. Maybe I can have my cake and eat it too by not having to dual-boot any OS at all.

• It creates it's own boot menu which in itself is not a problem, but when Ubuntu installs it also installs a grub menu so you click on two menus to get into Ubuntu, (only have to click on the initial Wubi menu to get into Windows). This is just a minor annoyance because I went into the grub menu in Ubuntu and set the boot time to 1 second so it would automatically boot the grub menu and in a shorter time and I wouldn't have to touch it.

• If your Windows installation fails because of a virus or you need to reload windows for any other reason, then you will lose your Wubi install also. Those who want a separate home partion so they can always only install Ubuntu retaining this information will not be able to do so. In my case the benefits outweigh the loss.

• Right now they are still using Ubuntu Lucid as their Ubuntu installation. Those who want to try a newer version, or another version of Linux will have to try their own experimental install. Wubi says on their web site that it is possible to install other versions by somehow deleting the Ubuntu folder and installing another version in place of it. This was beyond what I wanted to attempt and Lucid Ubuntu is fine for me.

• Because it somehow uses Windows native drivers there was at least one thing missing. It didn't sense the sound system in the same way. The sound icon was missing from the taskbar at the top. The installation did have sound, I just had to click on the sound mixer icon in the AlaCarte menu, and this was a basic mixer window. For my wife and I this wasn't really a bother since she never used the more complicated sound mixer anyway. I simply installed a shortcut to it on the taskbar to open that same window so I could control the sound. I also haven't had the time to try it with skype so I don't know if it will work with that. Guess I'll have to wait to find out.