Thanks for making this country a better place by declaring war on your own unborn children; for showing everyone how easy it is to murder someone who is helpless. Thanks for repeatedly pointing out how horrible we are for increasing our carbon footprints, while you viciously slaughter your own offspring. Thank you for constantly complaining about our country being involved in a war against people who sincerely want us dead, while at the same time supporting the destruction of a large part of our future generation.

Thanks for doing your part by following like sheep and not making your own decisions. Thank you for listening to Michael Moore and taking what he says as the gospel truth; for paying attention to his rejection of fat, rich, white men while he makes millions off his “documentaries” and embodies exactly what he claims to hate. Thanks for listening to Al Gore denounce us for causing global warming while he gets into his fuel-dumping private jet to fly to his grossly polluting mansion. Thanks for listening to countless celebrities babble endlessly about things they likely don’t even understand, being trapped in their Hollywood bubble.

But most of all, thank you for your hypocrisy. Thanks for saying one thing and doing another. Thanks for constantly preaching peace, love, and tolerance, but refusing to listen to anyone who has an opposing viewpoint. Thanks for standing up against hate and inequality by showing a passionate animosity for anyone who disagrees with you. Thanks for criticizing people for “pushing their beliefs on others” while you refuse to accept anyone who doesn’t have the same political opinion as you. Thanks for placing the blame for everything on the President when a Republican is in office, but shifting the blame to other people (namely the previous President) when a Democrat is in office.

Thanks again. I really appreciate it.

Now consider the smallest building blocks of life. Think about DNA – and not only its complexity, but how perfectly the molecules are structured together, and how consistent that structure is between living things. Then think about how that DNA acts as a blueprint, instructing each cell what to do and giving it a purpose. Then think about the cell, with all its complex inner workings and interactions with other cells, and how they all just seem to know what they’re meant to do. Then think about the number of cells that make up just one part of a living being – say, your eye. And all those cells work together perfectly to create a working eye, and they all interact with other cells, interfacing with the surrounding muscles and tissue, and sending and receiving massive amounts of information to and from the brain. And think about how many cells are in each of those parts as well, and how all of them also know what they’re meant to do. And think about how all these parts make up a fully functional body, complete with a consciousness and the ability to think and interact with the surrounding environment, also made up of all these building blocks.

Now think about where everything came from.

Many of us say that all of this was created by someone or something far more intelligent than us; that everything was carefully crafted by the hands of an almighty being. We say that everything was designed with intention and purpose, and that the pieces of the puzzle were all put together in order by a genius master planner.

Other people say that it all happened by chance; that everything in the universe was formed by a cosmic accident. They say that there was a big bang – a rapid expansion of matter that formed the universe. Then, somehow, life began. Non-living matter suddenly and inexplicably became living matter. Then, over a period of millions of years, this matter evolved into many forms, eventually ending with all the species we see today, including humans. Intelligent, living human beings, capable of thinking, acting, inventing, building, feeling, loving, and hating, complete with personalities, emotions, personal preferences, differing strengths and weaknesses, fears, and desires, evolved from an explosion of matter that was at one time not even alive.

And you tell me that my beliefs are unfounded and ignorant? That I’m a stupid, childish bigot, and I believe in a fairy tale? That evolution is obvious, and intelligent design is far-fetched? That in order to believe in God you have to be insane or delusional? Some people even say it is a proven fact that the big bang happened and triggered the evolution of life. Now who’s delusional?

People say that faith and science are incompatible, and that there is no place in the scientific world for the theory of intelligent design. But wait… isn’t science supposed to be the search for understanding through experimentation and observation? Doesn’t that mean intelligent design should at least be considered and studied – not thrown out the window and called superstition? It seems to me that it is easily just as likely (and in fact much more likely) that we were created as it is that we evolved from a mass of dead matter. In fact, the big bang theory contradicts one of the basic principles of biology – that living matter cannot come from non-living matter.

I guess the bottom line is that Darwinism is not perfect, and that intelligent design – a theory that is just as feasible – should have a place in the scientific community as a valid theory about the origins of life and a possible alternative way of thinking. Scientists are supposed to welcome the questioning and testing of current theories, not revoke it based on personal beliefs and opinions. After all, didn’t Darwin go against what was commonly believed at the time? Wouldn’t it be hypocritical to denounce one theory based solely on another unproven theory? Whatever your personal belief is, you have to acknowledge intelligent design as a possibility.

Yeah, I believe in the big bang… God spoke, and BANG – it happened.

Open up /etc/grub.d/10_linux in your favorite editor. Scroll down to the while loop at the end of the script and replace the while… do… done statements with if… then… fi. Save the script, run update-grub and you’re done! Your boot menu should now show only the latest kernel for your Ubuntu install. I’m guessing this will work for just about any distro that uses Grub2, although I’ve only tested it on Ubuntu.

I’m talking about things like:

• The light bulb – Thomas Edison, 1880.
• The telephone – Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Thomas A. Watson, and Elisha Gray, 1876. Although Bell was born in Scotland, most of his work on the telephone was done with the help of the three aforementioned Americans in Boston.
• The airplane – Wright Brothers, 1903.
• The active-matrix LCD – T. Peter Brody, 1972.
• The microprocessor – Intel, Texas Instruments, General Instrument, and Garrett AiResearch (all American companies) all released microprocessors in or around 1971.
• AC long-distance electrical transmission – Nikola Tesla, 1888.
• The transistor – AT&T/Bell Labs, 1947. Just as important, the silicon transistor – Texas Instruments, 1954.
• Duct tape – Permacel/Johnson & Johnson, 1942

And these are just the handful that I could think of.

And what about all the problems that we’ve managed to work through, the amazing infrastructure we’ve built, the aid we’ve given to parts of the world that needed help, the superior strength of our military, and our influence on other governments and groups of people?

I’m not saying we don’t have any problems; that would be ridiculous. What I’m saying is that we have the same problems as everyone else, and I think we usually deal with them very well; it’s only the few that we deal with poorly that get any attention. And I think most of the disgust and dislike towards us stems from jealousy and misunderstanding. There is no doubt in my mind that the United States of America is the greatest nation to live in and try to live a happy and fulfilling life.

“What’s right about America is that although we have a mess of problems, we have great capacity – intellect and resources – to do some thing about them.”

Henry Ford II

“Our American values are not luxuries but necessities, not the salt in our bread, but the bread itself. Our common vision of a free and just society is our greatest source of cohesion at home and strength abroad, greater than the bounty of our material blessings.”

Jimmy Carter

A quick Google search for slipstreaming Vista will bring up vLite. It is a handy app, and makes slipstreaming SP1 easy. It also allows removal of some things, which I found out is a bad idea because it will cause problems installing other service packs later. It also allows you to make some other tweaks, like disabling UAC and modifying services, and creates an unattended setup for you as well if you want. The main problem I ran into with vLite is its inability to slipstream SP2 into the install.

So I looked some more, and found this article on slipstreaming SP2. Basically what you do is install Vista on a clean partition (or in my case on a virtual machine), avoid setting up any actual user accounts, install the service packs, and capture the drive back to the install image on your new setup disc.

After I did this, I also realized that you can install all the rest of the available Windows updates into the image. Then I thought about it and figured that it should be possible to install other apps too (you know, like Firefox, Adobe Reader, 7-Zip, Flash Player, GIMP, etc.) so you don’t have to install them later. I tried it, and it worked flawlessly. It does take pretty much all day though, so before doing it you’d have to determine whether or not it’s worth it for you.

Here’s what you need:

1. A Vista install disc. 32-bit and 64-bit are not interchangeable, so you have to use whichever you want slipstreamed.
2. A host machine with the capability to run whichever version of Vista you’re slipstreaming, preferably with that version of Vista already installed on it.
3. A clean virtual machine with that capability as well, or a clean partition to install a fresh copy of Vista on. I will be assuming you’re using a virtual machine, because it makes the process easier.
   • If you use a virtual machine, you’ll need a way to mount a virtual drive as a local drive. If you use VMware, you can use vmware-mount for this purpose. You’ll also probably want to add the install path for this to your path statement to make it easier to run it later.
4. The Windows Automated Installation Kit installed on your computer. The download for this is a .img file (same thing as .iso), which you will have to either burn to a DVD or mount to a virtual drive, then run the installer. You can probably extract the contents to a directory using 7-Zip or the like and run it from there instead, but I haven’t tried it that way. The installation for this requires a reboot, so it’s probably best if you install this before starting the slipstreaming process.
5. vLite. You don’t absolutely need it, but it makes it much easier to create a new ISO image (or burn directly to DVD if you want). It also puts together the unattended setup for you, as well as the other things I mentioned earlier. If you don’t use vLite, you’ll have to use something like UltraISO to replace the install.wim file in the original ISO. Trust me, it’s just easier to use vLite.
6. Standalone installer for Service Pack 1. Get 32-bit version here, or 64-bit version here.
7. Standalone installer for Service Pack 2. Get 32-bit version here, or 64-bit version here.
8. Installers for all the other apps you want slipstreamed in.
9. Time and patience.

Here’s what you do:

1. Install WAIK if you haven’t done so already.
2. Install vLite if you haven’t done so already.
3. If you don’t have the Service Pack installers yet, you should start downloading them now and continue the process while they are downloading.
4. Dump the contents of your Vista disc to a directory somewhere on your hard drive.
5. Prepare your virtual machine. A 10GB virtual drive should be plenty of space, and 1GB RAM should be sufficient. Also be sure to set up networking (bridged mode works the best). You should set the optical drive to the physical drive where your Vista DVD is (or set it to use a Vista DVD ISO if you have one).
6. Install a clean copy of Vista on your virtual machine. During the process, do not enter a product key. The installer will whine at you about it, but ignore it. Also, you’ll want to create a partition on the virtual drive instead of just using the whole thing, otherwise you’ll probably have issues accessing it externally later.
7. When installation is complete, the Windows Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE) will show up. It is a window titled “Set Up Windows” and it will show up either asking you about your locale, or asking you to set up a new user account. Don’t click anything.
8. Press Ctrl+Shift+F3. The machine will reboot into audit mode and you’ll be logged into the Administrator account. A window titled “System Preparation Tool” will show up. Leave it alone for now.
9. Install Service Pack 1 using the installer you downloaded earlier. Make sure to let it reboot however many times it wants to. You’ll have to get the installer through a folder that is shared between your host machine and your virtual machine. I got to mine through my networked admin share. To do that, open up explorer on the virtual machine and type in “\\hostname\c$” replacing “hostname” with the actual hostname or IP address of your host computer. You’ll also have to enter in your credentials, and then navigate to wherever you downloaded the files. You’ll also obviously need to have file sharing enabled on your computer. There are other ways to get the files to your virtual machine, but that’s beyond the scope of this tutorial. Honestly, if you can’t figure it out, you probably shouldn’t be doing this anyway.
10. Run the SP1 cleanup tool to get rid of the backups of files that were replaced by SP1. To do this, open the Run dialog (hit WinLogo+R), type “vsp1cln” and hit OK. When prompted, hit Y. Wait for the process to complete. It only takes about a minute, and the window will most likely disappear when it’s done. At this point, you might want to reboot once again for good measure (using the Start Menu, not the sysprep dialog).
11. Install Service Pack 2 via the same process as Service Pack 1.
12. Run the SP2 cleanup tool the same way you did with SP1, except with the command “compcln” instead of “vsp1cln”. Again, wait for it to complete and reboot for good measure.
13. If you’re going to do multiple installation configurations, this would be a good place to create a snapshot to revert to later.
14. At this point, it’s up to you whether or not you want to install anything else. I would recommend at least getting all the available important and recommended Windows updates. It will take a long time, but it will save that much time later each time you install Vista on another machine. Be sure to reboot and check for more updates afterward, because all the updates don’t usually show up the first time. I would also strongly recommend avoiding installing any drivers or hardware-dependent software, as the hardware configuration will be different on other machines. At this time, you can also do whatever registry tweaks you want. Just remember that any user-specific things you do will only apply to the Administrator account, which you will most likely never use again.
15. When you’re done installing things, reboot one more time just to make sure everything is kosher. Empty the Recycle Bin and delete as many temp files as you can. Most of them will be in C:\Windows\Temp and C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Temp. If you used a browser within the virtual machine, you’ll probably want to clean up your history and everything as well.
16. This might also be a good place to take a snapshot.
17. In the sysprep dialog, select “Enter System Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE)”, check the “Generalize” box, and select “Shut Down”. Hit OK. Booting back into the virtual machine at this point may or may not screw things up, so I’d recommend not trying. Of course, if you saved a snapshot earlier, you can always go back to that. If you need to, you can probably get back into audit mode using Ctrl+Shift+F3 again at the OOBE dialog, but do this at your own risk.
18. Open up a WAIK command prompt. Default location is Start->All Programs->Microsoft Windows AIK->Windows PE Tools Command Prompt. If you have UAC enabled, you’ll probably have to right-click it and run as administrator.
19. At this point, you’ll have to mount your virtual drive to a drive letter. If you used VMware, the command is:
    vmware-mount V: "\path\to\image.vmdk"
    Where V is whatever drive letter you want to mount to, and the path is the actual path to your disk image. If it doesn’t give an error, continue to the next step. If it gives you an unexpected error, chances are the partition is larger than the drive. This is what happens when you have the Vista installer use the whole drive. You can check to see if this is the problem by looking in Event Viewer. If this is the problem, it can be fixed using the following command from the directory where VMware is installed:
    vmware-vdiskmanager -x 10.01GB "\path\to\image.vmdk"
    Where 10.01GB is a size slightly larger than the existing image. This command takes forever, but it works to fix the problem. After it’s done, try mounting the image again.
20. With your drive mounted, run the following command to create a new image for the Vista installer:
    imagex /compress maximum /flags "ULTIMATE" /capture V: "\path\to\new\image.wim" "Windows Vista ULTIMATE" "Windows Vista Ultimate"
    In the /flags argument, replace “ULTIMATE” with whatever version you’re slipstreaming, all caps, no spaces (i.e. “HOMEPREMIUM”). V: is obviously the drive where the disk image is mounted, and the path is the location of where you want the new image to be placed. The last two arguments are the name and description of the image. What I have listed are the original name and description for Ultimate, but you can safely put anything you want there. If you’re adding an additional image to the same file (which is what you need to do in order to get multiple installation options), use “/append” instead of “/capture”. If you need to change the version flag, name, or description, you can use the following command (Home Premium used as example, and 1 being the number of the image being modified):
    imagex /flags "HOMEPREMIUM" /info "\path\to\image.wim" 1 "Windows Vista HOMEPREMIUM" "Windows Vista Home Premium"
    You can just use the command “imagex” by itself for more help on other things you can do with it.
21. The capture command takes forever, so go watch the latest episode of Two and a Half Men while you wait.
22. When you’ve added all the configurations you want, go to where you dumped your Vista disc contents and replace sources\install.wim with the new .wim file you just created.
23. Run vLite and select the location where you dumped your Vista disc. If you have multiple configurations in your .wim file, you can only do modifications to one configuration at a time, so you’ll have to pick which one you want to tweak, etc. It will take a few seconds to load up the configuration, but when it’s done it should list the name and description you set earlier, and it should also show Service Pack 2 on the Version line. Hit Next.
24. If you have other drivers or packages you want added, check the Integration box. This most likely isn’t necessary, especially if you already did all the Windows updates. I would strongly recommend unchecking the Components box, because removing components will cripple the ability to install any service packs later (and possibly some other updates). Tweaks and Unattended Setup are optional, but can come in handy if you want to customize a little further. I don’t know any reason why you wouldn’t want to make an ISO, so you’ll probably want to check that box (when you get to that point, it will let you burn right to a DVD instead if you want).
25. Step through the rest of the wizard. It is pretty self-explanatory. When you’re done, you’ll have a slipstreamed Vista setup disc!

And here’s what you get immediately after a fresh install:

1. I took that vacation I was talking about. My brother came out to Sac after all my graduation stuff (and funny enough, also after my parents had already gone back to Minnesota). We went down to southern California for several days. Since we were on a budget, we only stayed in a hotel for one night and camped the rest of the time. We stayed at Malibu Creek State Park first, which was basically a big open area with few trees and no seclusion or privacy. Not to mention the loud group of hippies camping across the driveway. Yeah, I don’t recommend camping there. Anyway, we used that time to go visit Hollywood (very disappointing) and other places around there. We also took some time to take in some scenic vistas from Mulholland Drive. Next, we took the Pacific Coast Highway all the way down to San Clemente. That took a good 3 hours because there was so much traffic. It was still pretty awesome though, and we got a good look at some places I wouldn’t mind living, especially the beach cities of Orange County. We stayed at San Clemente State Beach that night, which, unlike Malibu Creek, I highly recommend. Our site was across the driveway from a cliff and the ocean, and we also had plenty of space between us and the next campsite. While we were down that far south, we figured we might as well go to San Diego, so that’s what we did the next day. Then we headed up to our hotel at Redondo Beach. It wasn’t the greatest place (mainly becuase they charge for parking and WiFi, but also because we were supposed to have a view from our room but it was only on the second floor), but it was still a nice break from camping. The next day we started to head back up. We stopped and hung out in Santa Monica (awesome place) for a while, and then we started up Highway 1. We stayed at Morro Strand (or Morro Bay – I can’t remember which) State Beach that night, which was pretty awesome. The campsites are all right next to each other, but there weren’t very many people camping so we still had our space. The really nice thing about it was that we were actually camping on the beach. There was a fence and some dunes between us and the ocean, but we could still see it if we stood up. The next day we took Highway 1 all the way back up to San Francisco. We stopped there shortly, and then headed back to Sacramento. Pictures
2. I spent April, May, and June looking for a job in California. I couldn’t find anything. Out of probably about 200 places I sent my resume, none of them responded at all.
3. I came home. By the end of June, I was out of money and still couldn’t find a job. My parents and brother came out for a couple days, and we packed up all my stuff and drove back to Minnesota.

Now I’m back to looking for a job again, this time in Minnesota. I’ve been looking since I got here but I still can’t find anything. I now have three different fields that I’m qualified to work in, but I can’t find a job in any of them. I guess I’m screwed.

In some ways it seems like I’ve been here forever, but at the same time I can’t believe I’m already done. It’s been quite a ride though, going from EMS1 and EMS2 to Chassis and Drivetrain all the way through Street Rod. I still find it amazing how much I’ve learned from this, not only about cars, but about life in general and about living in California.

I’m glad I didn’t listen to what people told me, because I wouldn’t be where I am today if I had. I don’t know why people say some of the things they do, but I’ve found that if you want to know something for sure you have to try. I was told a lot of things, like how bad the weather is, how there’s always too much smog, how the people out here are not as nice as they are in Minnesota, and how much I’m going to want to go back home. None of it was true. Sacramento is a beautiful city with some amazing people. Yeah, there are some unfriendly folks here, but not any more than anywhere else. I’ve made some very good friends here. The weather is beautiful too; it does rain a lot in the winter, but not any more than it does during the summer in Minnesota. It was sunny and almost 80 degrees yesterday, while the Midwest was experiencing below-freezing temperatures. Tell me that’s bad weather. I don’t know why everyone thought I was going to want to go back to Minnesota, but they were so wrong. I do miss my family and friends from there, but I would still rather stay in California.

Now that I’m done with school I’m going to be taking a little vacation to the Los Angeles area for a week, and then I’m going to have to find a job. I’m looking for work in California, but if I can’t find anything I’ll probably have to move back to Minnesota, at least temporarily. It is kind of hard to re-enter the real world, but I think I’ll manage. Hopefully I’ll be able to find a job and stay out here. California is kind of a part of me now, and I hope to keep it.

So, what do we breathe? Oxygen, of course. And what do we exhale? Carbon dioxide, the most prevalent greenhouse gas. And what produces our oxygen by taking in carbon dioxide? Plants. And what do cows produce? Methane, another prevalent greenhouse gas.

So here’s the deal. Who eats plants, causing a decrease in the removal of carbon dioxide, and who doesn’t eat cows, causing an increase in the production of methane? Looks like the steady increase in vegetarians over the years may be the cause of global warming.

When I got back to California the last week of December, my brother and I drove down to Monterey, and then made our way back up to Sacramento over the next few days, stopping in Santa Cruz and San Francisco on the way. Pictures

After my brother flew back to Minneapolis, it was time to start school. The course I’m in right now, Street Rod and Custom Fabrication, is pretty cool. It, along with most other elective courses at WyoTech, is long enough to have two six-week phases. In a lot of courses, including everything  in the Core, classroom lectures are mixed in with shop time throughout each phase. Street Rod is a little different though, having the first two weeks lecture and the rest of the time in shop.

Lectures are always boring to an extent, but at least in Street Rod they were informative and interesting. I really did learn a lot about basic metal fab, welding, and painting in those first two weeks. Then we got to apply those things in shop. We have a few competencies this phase, and they are all actual practical things we need to be able to do in order to work well in the field. The first comp was on MIG welding, performing various types of welds on small “coupons” of 20 gauge sheet steel. It took a lot of practice for everyone to get the welds good enough to pass, but we are held to a pretty high standard of work so we can be very good at what we do. The next comp was to fabricate a scaled-down roll pan with a scaled-down frenched license plate holder. It involved some cutting, shaping, welding, and a lot of filing, but the end result was pretty sweet. Now I’m working on TIG welding, which is quite a bit more challenging than MIG, but I’m starting to get it. We also did a quick comp on plasma cutting, and we’ll do another quick one on shrinks with oxy-acetylene. With the end of this phase coming up quick, I’m looking forward to next phase and then graduation.

The weather has been pretty good too. It has been rainy at times, but not as much as I had been told. The temperature is 68° right now, and the lowest I’ve seen it get this winter was about 30° in the middle of the night. Not bad at all, especially for someone from Minnesota.

For the break, I’ll be spending the first week back home in frigid Minneapolis. It should be fun though, because I get to be there for our usual Christmas activities. I am actually getting two weeks off, but the school didn’t let us know soon enough, so my plane tickets are only for a week of staying there. That’s okay though, because my big bro is flying back to Sac with me and we’re gonna hang out in Cali for the second week before he flies back to Minnesota. Not sure what we’re gonna do out here yet, but I think it will involve some coastal driving. We’ll see I guess.