The McCaine Mutiny

I don't like McCain.

I don't like his economic policy, I don't like his healthcare plan, I don't like him waving the "Bloody shirt" of his POW-ness, and I don't like his war platform(which may or may not take us to war with Iran and/or Russia).

With all that said, I am immensely pissed off at the Huffington Post for the unbelievable amount of class they have shown. If you can't bring yourself to click the link, that's understandable. To summarize, Chris Kelly is comparing McCain to Captain Queeg of Herman Wouk's novel The Caine Mutiny. Reading his column leads one to conclude:

(1)He has not read The Caine Mutiny
(2)He has not SEEN The Caine Mutiny
(3)If he has read it, he has failed very basic high school reading comprehension.
(4)Or he's a dishonest turd cherry picking the book like Verhoven and Starship Troopers.

Having read the novel multiple times myself(mostly on deployment, which I will wager that Mr. Kelly has not done either), it's very clear who the author thinks is "at fault" in the mutiny. Hint: It's the mutineers. Specifically, the cerebral proto-Berkeley type Keefer, who has egged the XO on to relieve Queeg. Greenwald, the lawyer who got Maryk off(and who is quoted in Kelly's column) says:

I'm coming to Old Yellowstain. Coming to him. See, while I was studying law 'n' old Keefer here was waiting for his play for the Theatre Guild, and Willie here was on the playing fields of Prinshton, all that time this birds we call regulars--these stuffy stupid Prussians, in the Navy and Army were manning guns. Course they weren't doing it to save my mom from Hitler, they were doing it for the dough, like everybody else does what they do. Question is, in the last analysis--last analysis--, what do you do for dough? Old Yellowstain, for dough, was standing guard on this fat dumb and happy country of ours. Meantime me, I was advancing my little free non-Prussian life for dough. Of course we figured in those days, only fools go into the armed service. Bad pay, no millionaire future, and you can't call your mind or body your own. Not for sensitive Intellectuals. So when all hell broke loose and the Germans started running out of soap and figured, well, it's time to come over and melt old Mrs. Greenwald---who's gonna stop them? Not her boy Barney. Can't stop a Nazi with a lawbook. So I dropped the lawbooks and learned how to fly. Stout fellow. Meantime, and it took a year and a half before I was any good, who was keeping Mama out of the soap disg? Captain Queeg.

Greenwald goes on to say how much he regrets torpedoing Queeg's career, how making a fool out of a Freudian psychiatrist is like shooting a fish in a barrel, and how he deserved better.

Mr. Kelly, I don't like Senator McCain. But he deserves better than cheap shots from an illiterate draft-dodger(which is how I mentally think of ALL folks who haven't served) who seems to be very skilled at guessing Herman Wouk's wants and needs, despite not correctly reading the intent of The Caine Mutiny

Entirely Overpowered.

My mother has a problem. Her computer is beginning to show it's age. Indeed, it struggles to open up simple applications such as web browsers, and suffers from severe overheating problems. With a mighty 1.8Ghz P4 and 512MB of DDR it gets much agitated when my brother plays Medieval: Total War 2 on it.

Alas, my mother does not want to use Vista, coworkers telling her that it is not mature yet. In addition, the Dell/HP/Gateways being sold with XP coming in at over a grand. I suggest that there may be a better way. Using my vast array of technical "skills" I can assemble a long lasting computer for her.

I plan on approaching this with the appropriate amount of restraint. After cogitating upon the $700 budget(not including the OS purchased through her work) I settled upon the following:


Antec Sonata III 500 Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply

MSI P35 Neo2-FR LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard

EVGA 512-P3-N800-TR GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz

SABRENT CRW-UINB 65-in-1 USB 2.0 Internal Card Reader w/ USB 2.0 Port

HITACHI Deskstar P7K500 HDP725032GLA360 (0A35411) 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

Sony NEC Optiarc Black 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 20X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 20X DVD±R Burner

In addition, I have another 2 GB of DDR2, and a Creative Xi-fi handy. Tom's hardware managed to run two 8800GTs in SLI, so I'm not too concerned about the power source. As it happens, I came in $60 dollars under budget. The specimen jas been constructed, and software loaded, so far it's running extremely smoothly. And QUIET! I had to open up the case to make sure the fans were running.

Some have called me crazy for constructing "an overpowered machine for a middle age woman", but would I not be more mad if I didn't grab the bets bang for the buck?

Plus, it came in under budget. Bite me.