The Pnebleu Blog

So, yesterday morning I clicked the upgrade button thinking everything would be fine and I’d be finished with the automatic update to WordPress 2.9 in a few minutes.  Nope!  The MySQL database I was using was less than version 4.1.2, which is required for the new WordPress version.  So the upgrade failed in the middle of the process.  I was unable to login to the administration screen and I was unable to upgrade the MySQL database directly.

Fortunately, I downloaded the backups beforehand, as you are supposed to do in the upgrade process.  I created a new 5.0 MySQL database, uploaded the backup (after a few tweaks to the SQL to make it work right), and reconfigured my WordPress installation on the hosting server.  After that it worked correctly.  I didn’t lose anything, nothing was corrupted, and I didn’t have to re-upload my files and photos for the links to work.

If you are going to have an upgrade failure, this is the one I would recommend.  It only took about 45 minutes to get everything working after it failed.

Lately, I’ve been out of the loop on news and politics in the U.S.  I just haven’t been motivated to stay involved.  Everything seems to be getting worse in D.C.  National debt, health care, and corporate bailouts are a few of the issues that have been the most controversial and seem to be progressing in the wrong way.  Does age bring on cynicism?  It seems to be doing that with me.  I’ve gotten very fed up with both sides.  Both claim to do things, but then all that is accomplished is that the federal government has gotten bigger and more powerful.

So, I’ve had the BlackBerry Bold for a couple weeks now.  I’ve gotten quite accustom to using it regularly.  Actually, some of this is typed with it.

First off, as a phone it works much better than my old one.  I can get the volume loud enough to hear well when I’m driving.  It allows me to keep all the phone numbers and email addresses I need for people.

As an Internet-device, it suits my purposes very well.  The browser on this model phone reduces websites to fit on the whole screen, then you zoom in to see what you want.  Also, some sites have mobile pages and the zoom feature automatically turns off for those because they are already the right size.  I have almost completely moved to the BlackBerry for my email needs.  The qwerty keyboard has is it’s greatest feature in my book.

Finally, as an application platform it has a good start, but there is room for improvement.  The BlackBerry App World store has many applications, but not nearly as many as the iTunes App Store.  It also is hard to navigate on the phone.  There is no way to browse the store on the PC, which is a really bad idea.  I want to be able to easily buy apps from my computer, because it is easy to use for this.

Overall, I am very happy with this phone.  It’s not perfect, but it is so much better than what I had before.

It is finally here for me!  I got my Blackberry Bold yesterday evening.  In the next couple of days I will updated this post with info about my experience.

If you’ve read the sidebar, you should be aware that I’m a junior at Texas A&M University.  TAMU is full of traditions.  Greeting passersby with a “howdy” is one of the most recognizable traditions practiced on- and off-campus.  Every year there is a cyclical decline of the use of “howdy.”  High in August and decline through December.  There is a low spike in January, then it declines to it’s lowest in May.  I’ve notice over the pass three years an overall decline in “howdy’s” use.

I attribute the iPod as a leading reason for the decline in “howdy’s” that I hear.  The popularity of the Apple iPod and other mp3 players lead to people wearing headphones to and from class on campus.  Listening to music, Aggies are less likely to spout a brief “howdy” to the person walk by, and if you walk by someone wearing headphones/earbuds you are less likely to say “howdy,” as not to disturb them.

This is a sad trend here in Aggieland.  I hope the new classes admitted will push to bring back “howdy” to the levels it once was.  I’ll do my part and say “howdy” to everyone I pass.

Spring break is overrated. I’m not saying I don’t appreciate the reprieve from school for a week, but it has become this massive conception. The two words bring to mind college students partying in Mexico or skiing in Colorado. Well, not for me; I worked from 10AM to 7PM Tuesday through Friday. I don’t remember very many spring breaks that I actually took a vacation. Oh well, it let me work 36 hours this week; 15 more than normal.

As this week has come to a close, I’ve been thinking more about what I’m going to do after I graduate next year. I really don’t know. I think I’d really like to do technology consulting for small to medium businesses, but I don’t want to travel much. I just heard on a podcast about the digital information archival field; it has really piqued my interest, I’m going to have to do some research on it. So, I’m stressing about what I’m going to do in the future. Everyone keeps telling me that I need to get ready, the real world is about to be here. Well, I’d like to tell everyone, the real world is already here. I’m already in the real world. I never was anywhere but in the real world. If juggling college, work, and daily chores isn’t in the real world, I don’t know what is.

Where did personal responsibility go? How did we even get to the point as a nation of considering nationalized healthcare? Why do we have individuals and family units living for years on welfare? Why don’t people stand up and take responsibility for their actions, criminal or morally wrong? Why do people fresh out of high school seem to go wild and crazy after they move out? Why is blame always shifted to someone else or to some external force? Most problems and issues can be narrowed down to a root cause of personal responsibility or lack thereof.

The growing trend for citizens to keep relying on the government for more and more is quite disturbing. FEMA, Social Security, welfare, and universal healthcare are programs where an individual’s responsibilities have been taken or moved over to the government to manage, as if it could manage it better. People need to step up and take charge. The government doesn’t need to do everything for you. It wasn’t designed to do that. If we are going to live in a nanny state, why would anyone want to work and provide for themselves? The incentive would be to take the government handouts and do nothing in return. This is completely wrong. It’s immoral, unproductive, and un-American. We are called to be the best we can be, both by God and by the capitalist system. If you live in America you have been give so many blessing by God, working your hardest is the least you can do in appreciation. In the capitalist system, rewards are give to success; leaching off of the success of others hurts the economy and reduces the incentives for hard workers (because they’re rewards will be taken by the government and redistributed to the undeserving “failures” in capitalism).

Let me make this clear, I do not think pure capitalism is the way we need to go. Welfare is very important and I’m not saying it should be abolished. However, I think it should be run by the states and should have a time period or some limit. This limitation would prevent people from staying on government welfare their entire lives. Private charity would play an even larger part than it does today, if you removed national welfare, the tax burden that causes, and the current state welfare systems and replaced them with a limited welfare program by the states.

National universal healthcare is appalling to me. It removes my right to have no healthcare plan and just pay for expenses as they come. Setting up a system like this removes everyone’s responsibilities. They’re saying you’re too stupid to go out an choose you method of paying for healthcare, so we are going to step in and make that decision for you. Look, you even get to choose a level of service! The supporters are going to say that the program is for the poor and underprivileged, so they can get health insurance. This may seem harsh, but it’s not the government’s job to bail out the “failures” of the capitalist system. By providing them with free or cheap healthcare when they cannot afford to attain it without government assistance, what incentives to work harder and move up in “class” does this procure?

Back down on the personal level, people always seem to find someone or something else to blame. Grow up! Be a mature individual and take responsibilities for any of your actions, right and wrong. If you make poor grades in school, don’t blame the professor or the test. Take responsibility for doing poorly and study harder next time. At work, mistakes happen, confess if you’ve done something incorrectly.

Financial responsibility has disappear with the arrival of the credit card. The amount of debt in this country is astounding! You people out there need to stop buying stuff you can’t afford! Be responsible and buy only what you need if you are in debt. Don’t purchase items on credit, save up until you can afford it. If you do finance something, pay each payment out fully or more. Don’t let the interest grow! Hard work and a tight wallets lead to prosperous lives. Be a responsible consumer.

This country has become, or maybe always was, a sissy state. Both on the national and personal levels people are lacking in responsibility for themselves and their actions. This is a major problem. If everyone is telling the government to take care of them, then no one is left to to take care of anyone, because we are the government in this country. We have to stand up and take responsibility.