Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a big supporter of personal gun rights and limited but strict gun control. I own many guns, have a Texas concealed handgun license (CHL), and occasionally I do carry my handgun. As for control, I believe in placing limits on gun ownership and carry, but mostly based on real safety concerns, not the imaginary ones the far left would like you to believe. My strongest belief on the limits, though, is more geared towards education, training, and testing.
Lately, in the past few years at least, our freedoms have been under attack. The thing is, they haven’t been under attack by foreign aggressors. No, they’ve been under attack by our own politicians, and they have been recruiting the masses as their footsoldiers. Many people feel that we have to sacrifice freedom for security. What bothers me is we send our people to war, supposedly in the name of protecting our Constitution, while at the same time, we’re eroding that very thing we’re suppose to be fighting for. I don’t understand the mentality required to justify this.
Lets face it, our country possibly has some of the broadest set of defined freedoms in the world actually written down in the form of the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights. We are actually allowed to criticize our own president and congress without repercussions. We are allowed to form militias in the defense of our societies from foreign and domestic oppression. We have the right to trial by a jury of our peers. There’s so many to list that I could go on for pages talking about them. If you were to look at our country based purely on our ideals, our actual chartered ideals, we would appear to be a great country.
However, we’re not all that great, these days.
Did you know that you can completely lose several of your rights defined by the constitution without due process simply in the name of homeland security? In fact, all a law enforcement official has to do is call you a terrorist. These are already lost rights. The rest are also on their way out should certain people have their way.
You see, a people with these rights is a dangerous people, especially when the people are informed.
The most recent debate I’ve taken part in about the erosion of rights involves protests. There is a Facebook group called “Make It Illegal to Protest at Military Funerals” which is something I strongly disagree with. Before you jump to the wrong conclusion, I’ll explain myself.
I think protesting ANY funerals is very wrong. I don’t care whose funeral it is. It’s wrong, plain and simple. However, this is my opinion. Non-violent protest of funerals is harmless and there is no legal justification to prohibit it. To ban protests at funerals would introduce erosion of our rights. Eventually, it’ll be used as precedence to continue the process of erosion. Eventually, the rights involved would disappear.
I hate protests at funerals, but I hate losing my rights and freedoms even more.
And besides, if we started or continued down this road of destroying the very thing our military is there to protect, wouldn’t that soldier have died in vain? Considering the damage we have already done to ourselves, maybe these soldiers do die in vain every day.
As I mentioned in my last article on ReadyBoost, I have been experimenting with ReadyBoost in my netbook. I explained how ReadyBoost works, so I’ll avoid that here. Instead, I’m going to throw out the speculation and provide some cold, hard, unscientific information. I actually stopped using ReadyBoost and deferred it to using a memory upgrade, but let me explain why.
The first thing anyone will notice about a netbook running on the Atom platform is how weak the processing is, particularly when it comes to media. While a netbook isn’t really designed for high end media, it seems like it isn’t even capable of media that one would expect it to be capable of. For example, some sub-HD video does not play properly. Intel claims the Atom CPU (particularly the n450) is perfectly capable for what it was intended for. However, it seems the expectation does not meet intention. I wasn’t looking for full HD playback, but I would have at least liked to fill the display with video using modern codecs.
Hah, I guess I’m trying for a record for longest headline on my site.
Anyway, I have a resume on monster.com. I get a lot of random offers, but occasionally, I get notifications that I have been registered at a contracting or consulting firm (these are different types of work) that I’ve been registered in their profile management system and that I should update my profile so that they can have the most recent information on me. The thing is, they got my information from monster.com and I keep my profile updated there. Why should I manage my profile outside of that? Obviously, these firms use monster.com, because, as I’ve said, that’s where they found me. They can’t find my latest information there?
I’ve, now, been informed by monster.com that this practice is a violation of their policies. The usage of my information is suppose to only be for the purpose of offers or establishment of employment. My information is not suppose to be used in any other way. Not for registration on third party sites. Not for solicitation. Not for newsletters. Not for training offers.
So, I am now responding to all of these firms. Simply put, I don’t advocate spamming or inconveniencing people, so if I burn bridges with this, oh well. I don’t want to work for a firm that spams. My response is, now, a canned response:
I did not register in your system for your services. I do not wish to manage employment profiles at numerous locations as it seems many contracting/consulting firms request it after registering me without my permission. You picked up my resume from monster.com and used this to make this implication. Please note that my resume is made available for job opportunities only, not for registration of services, newsletters, training, or anything else not relating to employment offers and establishment of employment.I keep my resume updated at monster.com so if you wish to acquire updated information from me in the future, please either use the information provided by monster.com or contact me for the information. I will not be updating a profile managed by your services unless I am employed by you.Thanks,
Beau Steward
