Are we related? ..brief blurb about my family genealogy...

One of my brothers has done a fair bit of research into the family tree. While we can trace our roots back to Germany, Ireland, England, and possibly France, one branch (the Cram family - also spelled Cramm, Kram, von Cram, etc) can be traced back to around 655 AD in Germany.

It turns out that if your family name is one of the below, we might be related. If you have money, I'd love to talk.

And for those who don't know, my original family name was "Little"; my wife's name was "Burton". When we were married, we combined our names: LITtle + burTON = LITTON. I periodically get contacted from other Littons around the world wondering if we're related. We might be related, but not due to the Litton name :)

Sad Day for Democracy in Hillsborough County

While many of us are still reeling from the epic mishandling of the past election by Buddy Johnson here in the Tampa Bay area, we have suffered another critical blow. Our recently elected Supervisor of Elections, Mrs. Phyllis Busansky, has passed away while at a conference in St. Augustine, FL. See story HERE.

First, I'd like to offer our collective condolences to her family, friends, and colleagues, and wish that all goes smoothly for you while you prepare for the future. She will be missed by many as a friend and certainly as a fierce politician who had a plan to turn around the poorly handled Office of the Supervisor of Elections.

So what comes now you ask? Admittedly, not an hour ago, I wasn't even quite sure of the answer to that question, but thanks to Joe, I am now.

Pam Iorio (D) was the Supervisor of Elections until she won the mayoral race, leaving the SoE position vacant. In this case, it falls to the Governor of Florida (then Jeb Bush (R)) to appoint a replacement. That replacement was Buddy Johnson (R).

Over Buddy Johnson's tenure as SoE, numerous reports were filed outlining the mishandling of the office, including the loss of a considerable sum of money, and federal assistance was requested to cover the deficit. In addition, there were a number of business ventures and real estate dealings that seemed to be less than honest and properly done. See story HERE.

So now, this appointment falls to our current Governor, Charlie Crist (R). I applauded Crist's handling of the Election in the State of Florida, by extending Early Vote hours due to overwhelming response, even though some Conservative camps urged him not to do so. It was an example of putting partisan politics aside and being a good Governor.

However, Crist, despite his good deeds, is still heavily influenced by the GOP, and may be more inclined to appoint another Republican to this position, despite the majority of Hillsborough county favoring Democrats in this past election.

The question remains, with the GOP's tarnished brand of politics, would he dare do such a thing? And what would the benefit be to the GOP in Florida and beyond? Would he risk backlash from the Florida and Hillsborough Democrats? I guess only time will tell.

Consumer Commodities and the Chinese Economy

It's rather unfair to blame the Chinese for all the problem that the U.S. is having with products imported from overseas manufacturers. While it seems an egregious error in judgment to allow certain, decidedly unsafe products, we cannot solely blame this on the Chinese. Certainly, oversight may be there, but is it not also the job of the American government to verify and test the claims made by ANYONE about the safety and fitness for use of a particular product?

We as a country demand more and more cheap products and demand them in bulk to further mitigate cost. Accelerated production just begs poorer and poorer quality. Cost-cutting, lack of quality control, and inflated assurances of the safety of these products underlie the major problems we're having with these problems.

A solution to this problem? Let's get off the "cheap-as-we-can-possibly-get-it" express at the next stop. More expensive products? Sorry, that's an unfortunate by-product in the short term, but American workers will get higher wages, better care, The American dollar will rise in value, the standard of living will increase, tax revenues increase, and our economy slowly eases out of this slump.

Just food for thought.

Starting 2nd week of Vegan eating...

Years ago, Shirley & I were vegetarian. I've been vegan a time or two, tho' neither of us remembers if I was vegan when we met (I don't think so, but not sure). For those who may not know, the difference is that some vegetarians might consume milk products ('lacto'), and some might consume egg products ('ovo'). Vegetarians who consume milk and egg products are lacto-ovo vegetarians, and that' what Shirley and I were during the first several years that we were together. There were a couple of times when I was a vegan; vegans don't consume any animal products.

Although we've not had red meat (beef, pork, etc) in over 30 years, for the majority of the past 20+ years we've eaten birds and fish, along with fruits, grains, veggies, etc. Recently we'd been considering getting healthier in our eating again.

Well, our buddy John (http://jonvon.net/) turned us on to The China Study (book, website), and then to The Thrive Diet (book, website). So motivated by those books, and with a lot of inspiration from VegWeb (bunches of great recipes), we've completed a week as vegans, and are starting on week 2.

My main impressions so far is that we are eating WELL, we are eating healthy, and I'm not feeling hungry, nor am I craving anything. One of my goals is (with this improvement in diet, coupled with increased exercise) to get down to a bodyfat percentage of 15% (currently just under 25%), and to see some great numbers re cholesterol, triglycerides, etc when I have my next physical checkup in mid/late summer. We'll see how the upcoming weeks go :)

Updating podcasts to iPod using Ubuntu

I've been running various versions of Ubuntu on my home machines (a desktop, a laptop, and a netbook) for some time now. But in the past, I'd had a devil of a time managing my iPod from Ubuntu. OK, it wasn't horrible, but I had to use a couple of applications: Rhythmbox, which seems to always be included with the default install of Ubuntu; and Amarok, which has to be added separately, but which I used to really like.

Well, Amarok was recently upgraded, and I truly hate the new interface. Especially on the netbook - which has become my main machine:) - the new Amarok interface with its clunky graphics and (to me) harder-to-use interface was just no longer an option. So I decided to see if the latest versions of Ubuntu and Rhythmbox could work alone.

Amarok had never seemed to be able to see the iPod on its own. I'd connect the iPod, Rhythmbox would open, then I could shut Rhythmbox and use Amarok from that point on.

Well a week or so ago, I upgraded the netbook to Ubuntu 9.04 (aka, the Jaunty Jackalope :) ...What I actually installed was an Ubuntu 9.04 remix from Dell. I'll do a separate post about the problems I had with the (non-Dell) 9.04 Ubuntu Netbook Remix; that's a separate story.

Hoping to be able to just use Rhythmbox, I did a very little bit of fumbling and happily discovered that it.just.works! So...I've posted a Flickr stream (7 screen shots) showing the very easy steps. Trust me, this used to be harder...honest!

In case you don't want or need to look at screen shots, here's the instructions:

Copy the desired podcast link to your clipboard. Then...

1. Select Applications > Sound & Video > Rhythmbox Music Player


2. Select Podcasts. Any feeds that you already have will display in the right-hand pane. Rightclick in the Feed pane and select New Podcast Feed.


3. Paste in the link to your new podcast, and click Add.


4. Right-click on the podcast name and select Update Podcast Feed. This will populate a summary line for each podcast episode, but this does not yet download the actual podcast.


5. Right-click on the desired episode and select Download Episode. Now the actual sound file will download.


6. Grab your iPod and USB cable. Plug the USB cable into the iPod and turn on the iPod. Once the iPod comes on, plug the other end of the cable into an open port on your computer. Rhythmbox will recognize the device and you'll see the name of your iPod appear in the Devices category. Click on the Podcasts category and drag the desired podcast episode(s) onto the name of your iPod.


7. Once your iPod is updated, locate the iPod icon on your desktop. Right-click on the icon and select Eject Volume. Once your iPod screen displays its normal menu, you can disconnect the USB cable from the computer and from the iPod.

Sweet :)