Ed Stoffel

Here's an aspect of the capture of Saddam Hussein you won't hear on the mainstream evening newscasts:

A Christian from central Texas said that God knew where Saddam Hussein was, so Russell decided to follow his advice and pray that God would show him where Hussein was. He said he also encouraged his men to pray that God would show them Hussein's location. A turning point in the search came not long after that. A member of an important family was captured, and he said he knew where Hussein was located.

 Continue Reading: Veteran describes the capture of Saddam Hussein, The Norman Transcript

Homeowners across the country are finding they're unable to operate their garage door remotes anymore. This is because the remote control systems are unlicensed users of frequencies already licensed for military use. In recent years, the military stopped using them much, but since 9/11, many military facilities are reclaiming the frequency spectrum.

Garage door freeze has broken out in other areas near military installations. Just before Christmas, hundreds of people around an Air Force facility in Colorado Springs reported that their remotes died when the 21st Space Wing began testing a frequency that would be used for homeland security emergencies or threats. Two years ago, testing of the system generated a dozen calls to Fort Detrick in Maryland. ...Since the years preceding World War II, the military has held a portion of the radio spectrum in reserve, from 138 to 450 megahertz.

Of course the Washington Post is wrong about the huge frequency range they listed. I suspect they meant that the military has always reserved 174-420 MHz. The entire VHF-FM band is 138 to 174 MHz, which is licensed for a variety of purposes to police, fire, rescue and business purposes. Ham radio uses 144-148 MHz.

A CBS report says the frequency reclaimed for Homeland Security is 390 MHz. Others sources say that garage door openers across the 300 MHz band are affected.

 Continue Reading: Near Quantico, A Click, but Garage Door Doesn't Budge, Washington Post

Support: verb - argue or speak in defense of; to be in favor of something and wish to see it succeed; give moral or psychological support, aid, or courage to; aiding the cause or policy or interests of; the activity of providing for or maintaining by supplying with money or necessities

Boston was terrorized Monday by illuminated mini-billboards promoting a cartoon series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball. Photo by Todd Vanderlin. Cartoon series by Turner Broadcasting.

From the front lines in the war on terror...

Things that I am tired of in this war: I am tired of Democrats saying they are patriotic and then insulting my commander in chief and the way he goes about his job. I am tired of Democrats who tell me they support me, the soldier on the ground, and then tell me the best plan to win this war is with a "phased redeployment" (liberal-speak for retreat) out of the combat zone to someplace like Okinawa. I am tired of the Democrats whining for months on T.V., in the New York Times, and in the House and Senate that we need more troops to win the war in Iraq, and then when my Commander in Chief plans to do just that, they say that is the wrong plan, it won't work, and we need a "new direction." --- I am tired of Code Pink, Daily Kos, Al-Jazzera, CNN, Reuters, the Associated Press, ABC, NBC, CBS, the ACLU, and CAIR thinking that they somehow get to have a vote in how we blast, shoot and kill these animals who would seek to subdue us and destroy us. I am tired of people like Meredith Vieria from NBC asking oxygen thieves like Senator Chuck Hagel questions like "Senator, at this point, do you think we are fighting and dying for nothing?" Meredith might not get it, but soldiers do know the difference between fighting and dying for something and fighting and dying for nothing.

 Continue Reading: Sergeant in Afghanistan - Stop the BS and "Let's Get It Done", Blackfive

Many churches suffer from what I'll call a revolving door syndrome, regularly adding members to the rolls while others are dropping off for no good reason. Some churches no longer have official membership, opting instead for a defacto membership of those who are present. Outside of those who move away and transfer to another church of like faith, a significant number seem unhappy, and searching for more. A recent study looks at how long typical church attenders stick with it...

Research conducted for Facts & Trends magazine revealed that the average length of time American Protestant adults have been attending the same church is 13.7 years. However, excluding the minority who cite a very long stay at the church, a more accurate median figure, the study noted, is 6.6 years. For older adults (55 and over), the average length of attendance at the same congregation is 15 years. Overall, 13 percent of churchgoers say they have been attending the current congregations for less than a year; 16 percent have been at the same church for one to two years; 11 percent for three to four years; 18 percent for five to nine years; 16 percent for 10 to 19 years; and 26 percent for two decades or longer.

 Continue Reading: Study: How Loyal are Churchgoers?, Christian Post

I've purchased Xandros Premium and installed it. I was running Xandros Professional's trial version, but Premium required a complete reinstallation. I still have Windows XP-SP2 on another machine.

Before completing a switch to Linux OS, it is necessary to determine whether I can do all the things I wish to do apart from Windows. Using an internet browser is not much of a problem, except for sites that require specific browsers. I ran into that problem with SunTrust Bank's online bill pay system which won't allow Mozilla Firefox, telling me to use Internet Explorer or Netscape. My employer's intranet site also requires Internet Explorer.

In searching for email solutions on Linux, I've found that while Hotmail works OK in Windows' Outlook Express, it doesn't work properly with any Linux email clients I've tested. Yahoo Mail's paid service allows POP access as well as a handy archive feature which ZIPs entire folders as individual .eml files. For saving individual messages, I wish the web interface had a "save-as" button for saving individual messages locally, but it doesn't.

If I wish to handle email at my own domain, AQ Host offers Horde and SquirrelMail, both of which have "save-as" buttons to save any message locally as an .eml file. AQ Host also includes Spam Assassin for scanning incoming email messages, if desired.

The point of saving messages in .eml format is that it preserves the headers, format and attachments of email messages. While Yahoo Mail's free service offers a "save text of message" link on each message, saving in .eml format is better. I've been archiving in .eml format for over 10 years (except a brief test using Outlook, which oddly uses the incompatible .msg format).

So I plan to read .eml archives with any one of a number of email clients in Linux, and continue saving .eml files with Yahoo Plus or Horde on my own server. Now I need to figure out if I can run all my other essential apps.

My made-to-order bare boned box arrived from TigerDirect and I installed the trial version of Xandros Professional. Many applications I need already run on Linux, but there are a few that don't including Quickbook Professional, Microsoft Money, and iTunes. That's where Crossover comes in. This part of the Xandros operating system supports the installation of specific windows applications where you select them from a supported list to setup the correct environment for the application to run in. It's also possible to install unsupported windows applications, which I'm pleased to find allows me to resurrect some Windows applications that no longer run under Windows XP-SP2, such as older versions of Quickverse (I've collected numerous translations).

Email in Linux is still problematic, as I'm unable to find a way to replicate the way I currently use Hotmail... reading and sorting mail into folders at work, and later saving that email at home. POP won't recognize online folders, and I've been unable to get email clients in Linux to recognize email folders from IMAP services (such as AIM and Fastmail). I don't want to handle email twice (I want it to stay sorted), but I want the ability to archive a selection of it each day at home. The old Mailblocks service would have done this, but AOL shut them down. AOL has lousy spam filtering, too. I haven't given my AIM Mail address out, and my AIM Mail box is full of undetected spam.

Gmail has excellent spam filters but does not allow auto-deletion of spam. Gmail also does not allow the creation of folders, rather hoping you'll depend on their message search ability. AIM Mail offers IMAP, but I've been unable to get email clients to download mail from folders other than inbox. Don't other people archive important emails?

Switching from Windows XP to Linux presents a number of challenges regarding email... how to receive email, how to save email locally, and how to read email I've saved over many years.

I currently use Hotmail, which I can read online while at work, sorting read mail into various folders. When I get home, I can pick up where I left off with that mail in the same folders, and save some of the messages to my hard drive in .eml format (Outlook Express). In the past, I've eschewed the though of using other email clients including Outlook because they would not support the .eml format. (Outlook uses .msg). In Linux, I can use Mozilla Thunderbird to read those old .eml messages, going back to the mid-1990s.

However, continuing to use Hotmail presents a challenge. With the paid version, Hotmail is available inside Outlook Express, but the server type is not POP or IMAP, but HTTP... a type not supported by most email clients. Thunderbird claims to be able to handle Hotmail by using the Webmail and Hotmail extensions together, but I was unable to get these to work properly. They will pickup any mail in my hotmail inbox, but all my other sorted folders full of email do not appear in Thunderbird.

If I am unable to identify a Linux email client that works with Hotmail, I may be forced to change email services. I want to be able to work with email online, but then permanently archive all email messages locally in individual folders, and NOT inside of an email client.

With increasing concerns about Windows OS in general, and Vista specifically, I've decided to explore the possibility of survival in a non-Microsoft OS. In the article What's the best Linux for beginners?, the version that seems to be the best fit for me is Xandros Professional. Though many applications are written for Linux, some are not. For that, Crossover allows the running of Windows applications.

I downloaded the trial version of Xandros Professional and installed it on my D-drive. It installed a dual-boot wedge on the C-drive so on boot, it presents me with the option of running Windows XP from the C-drive or Xandros Linux from the D-drive. Xandros runs well and connects to the internet fine. But now, Windows XP doesn't "see" the network adapter -- I'm getting the error msg "Network Adapter Unplugged". (It's a Broadcom 440 in a Dell machine.) I've tried a number of things to resolve the problem: a true cold boot (powering down for 10 seconds, then turning back on), rebooting the network router and cable modem, and disabling and reenabling the network device in Windows, all to no avail. I left the machine off for 20 minutes and when I came back and rebooted, Windows XP once again "saw" the network adapter. I then rebooted to Linux, which worked, but when I rebooted to XP, once again, it didn't see the network adapter.

So even though Linux is installed on a completely different drive, and I cold boot from one OS to the other, it still interferes with the machine's network adapter. In further experiments with longer cold boots, I considered installing a second network adapter, dedicating one to XP and the other to Linux to avoid this problem. Then, I reinstalled Windows XP... but the network card still refused to work.

It finally occurred to me that if Linux could mess up the card, maybe it could fix it. Instead of running Linux from the D-drive, I inserted a CD copy of Mepis Linux and ran it from the CD. The network card worked fine (as it always has within Linux). But then, after rebooting the computer, the network card once again worked from within Windows XP!!!

There may also be a software solution, getting Linux to release the network card as it powers down. But for me, the solution will be to dedicate a separate machine to Linux, not allowing it to run at all on the Windows machine.