One of these days, maybe the Internet will get its act together enough to make moving to a new Web host an instantaneous process.  Until then…well, I apologize to anybody that came in here Monday evening and saw this place in a cluttered or nonexistent condition.

Despite the research I did, the host I chose upon leaving GoDaddy, a company called Name.com out of Denver, could not keep a handle on its e-mail servers.  To make a long story short, every e-mail server they put me on was blocked by one major service or another.  In a world where Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail/MSN/Live, and ISP-issued accounts still rule the day, this was unacceptable.  I gave them three chances and each one went sour (all accompanied by other screw-ups that I am leaving out in the name of brevity).  On Monday afternoon, when Name.com offered me the choice of either waiting 72 hours to get the server I was on off of the BellSouth blacklist (keeping me from being able to e-mail my mother) or just get a refund, I was out of there faster than prunes go through an AARP meeting.

My new host is based in Durham, North Carolina and has the oddball name of A Small Orange.  Yes, GoDaddy seemed like a strange name at first years ago, too.  I just I hope that, unlike GoDaddy, “ASO” stays true to its principles and good corporate citizenship in addition to providing good service.  I already feel very comfortable with ASO so I hope this is the last I have to write about any downtime for at least a few months until there might be another burp when I transfer my domain registrations away from Name.com (those are locked in as there is a waiting period after a transfer and I already just took those away from GoDaddy’s clutches).

Stuff like this is why I always caution people not to move to just any Web hosting service.  Even those of us that think we know what we’re doing can get hosed.  This is especially true as people trying to be re-sellers of a company’s hosting services flood search engines with phony review sites that make a company look wonderful even if one enters the term, “Company X sucks” (thus explaining why I am not putting any links in this entry…I want it to be clear that I’m not selling anything).

As with Name.com (thank goodness!), make sure the company has a 30-day money-back guarantee (ASO gives customers 45 days).  This gives people a fair opportunity to see if a hosting company lives up to its promises and delivers on good service.  In addition, just like anything that has to do with computers and/or the Internet, always make sure to have a site’s files fully backed up every time a change is made.  One never knows when it might be time to bail on a moment’s notice.

The one good thing that might come out of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker‘s attempt to eliminate collective bargaining rights for his state’s public workers (well, only for those who’s unions support Democrats instead of Republicans) is that much more of this country is becoming aware of the Koch Brothers (pronounced like “Coke”).  For those not aware of how this happened, this was mainly due to a prank telephone call placed to Walker by Ian Murphy of The Beast (a.k.a. The Buffalo Beast) where Murphy pretended to be David Koch.  The recorded conversation went “viral” on the Internet and even made the major television news broadcasts.

Until this time, concern about and exposure of the Koch Brothers mainly stayed within the liberal portion of the media and, even then, mostly online at websites where the vast majority of Americans never wander.  Some more true Libertarian-leaning blogs had also begun to take notice of the Koch Brothers’ activities but not too many as the Kochs are beginning to fully corrupt that movement as much as they are the GOP.  This was what led me to bring them to my own readers’ attention last August in my entry titled, Koch Fiends.

Still, in a world where most citizens get their news in all-too-brief preformed nuggets (assuming they bother looking at any real news at all other than how some new media outlet is exploiting Charlie Sheen and allowing him to further embarrass himself when he is obviously a very sick man), the name Koch is still fairly nebulous in the mind of the general public.  This has been quite intentional on the part of the Koch Brothers as it seems they prefer playing the Wizard of Oz role role of the man behind the curtain.

The mysterious nature of the Koch Brothers is also aggravated by the fact that, up until 2005, their company, Koch Industries, did not sell any products or services familiar to the American public.  Their portfolio from petroleum to chemicals to mining and even finance all went to very limited and usually large customers so nobody could ever place the name Koch on something when they went to their local store.

However, that finally changed when, in December 2005, Koch Industries bought the huge lumber, paper, and building materials company, Georgia-Pacific.  Now, millions of Americans and people all over the world touch the Koch Brothers every day even in the most intimate and hidden portions of their bodies.

The range of Georgia-Pacific’s building materials is quite large — so much so that I do not want to bother listing them here.  However, when browsing your local home improvement big box retailer that killed off your old favorite lumber yard and local hardware store, just remember that these products are all easily identifiable as they all carry the company’s evergreen tree-shaped GP logo.

As for the paper products, these do not always prominently carry the Georgia-Pacific logo even in that small print on the back of the packaging.  Yet, they should still be easy to remember as some of these are very iconic and previously independent brands that, over time, ended up under the Georgia Pacific family tree and, eventually, in the hands of the Koch Brothers.

• Advantage (computer and copier printer paper)
• Angel Soft (toilet paper)
• Brawny (paper towels)
• Dixie (paper and plastic cups and plates, paper napkins)
• Image Plus (computer and copier printer paper)
• Mardi Gras (paper towels and napkins)
• Quilted Northern (toilet paper)
• Soft ‘n Gentle (toilet paper)
• Sparkle (paper towels)
• Spectrum (computer and copier printer paper)
• Vanity Fair (paper napkins, plates, bowls, and tablecloths)
• Zee (paper towels and napkins)

For my readers in Europe or with access to products made there, here is a list of some of the Koch Industries/Georgia-Pacific brands that might be more familiar.

• Colhogar
• Delica
• Demak’Up
• Inversoft
• Kitten Soft
• Lotus
• Moltonel
• Nouvelle
• Okay
• Tenderly
• Tutto

Keep in mind that this is about so much more than the latest effort by big business to engage in union busting.  The Koch Brothers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to pervert the American system of government.  Our Founding Fathers were very wise in trying to construct a country where there would be checks and balances against all forms of power, both governmental and corporate (and, I would add union power as well since many of them do need to be cleaned up and/or taken down a notch).  The Koch Brothers are spending their immense wealth to turn the United States of America into a place where there literally would be no laws enforcing workplace safety, labor standards, consumer welfare, or environmental protection.  To put it bluntly, that is frighteningly close to a fascist state (of course, minus the singular cult-of-personality-style ruler and the racist element).

In more immediate matters, the Koch Brothers are largely responsible for funding the so-called Tea Party movement which is bringing both the federal and state governments to a standstill with its no-compromise-allowed philosophy.  This is actually hurting our fragile economic recovery as it leaves state budgets and tax levels in limbo thus leaving smaller businesses unable to act on investing and new hiring since they cannot fully plan out their own expenditures.  Of course, that doesn’t hurt big guys like the Koch Brothers so they don’t care just as long as they have to pay less taxes and deal with fewer of those pesky regulations that do unnecessary things like keep their waste products out of our air and ground water.

So…what will you do with this information that long-time household friends like Dixie Cups and the Brawny Man are financing the destruction of proper, reasoned government and speeding along the race-to-the-bottom of the American workforce?  It’s a tough call because the only place people can really hit the Koch Brothers in their wallets is to boycott their Georgia-Pacific products and it’s not like this country’s other big lumber conglomerates have been great corporate citizens either.  It’s also hard on all of our wallets to go to more “green” paper products as those often cost twice as much as those made by the big companies (the only close exception I know of being the toilet paper sold at Trader Joe’s).

As per usual, I will leave it up to each individual as to what they want to do when it comes time to buy some paper or building products.  Maybe some reading this don’t mind giving the Koch Brothers their money for Quilted Northern just for the satisfaction of being able to wipe their ass on one of their products.  Well, just remember this.  Every time somebody buys a Georgia-Pacific product, the Koch Brothers are one dollar closer to being able to having no limits on what their many chemical plants put out into the atmosphere and ground water, no restraints on how their financial company plays on Wall Street, no curbs on how much money they can donate to political candidates, and no reservations that they know what is best for you and the country.  Think about that for a while, especially the last one…for it is just as bad for somebody like the Koch Brothers to think they know what is best for us as it would be for some equal force on the other side of the political spectrum.

As the old saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  There is no doubt that the Koch Brothers want absolute power to run their company free of any “interference” and damn anybody who’s home or health gets in the way.  To those that call themselves conservatives, is that what you really want?  I don’t think so, so it’s time to wake up and stop drinking the Fox News Kool-Aid on this one and see that the kind of world the Koch Brothers want is just as domineering and oppressive as the one they claim is trying to be created by President Obama.

As for me, I will repeat that I believe the Koch Brothers are trying to pervert our system of government.  Personally, I don’t allow perverts into my home.  Take or leave that as you wish…but, just in case you do care, just like with other similar offenders, I feel it is my duty to post pictures of these perverts so they can be easily recognized.

Since it has been a while since I have had the time, motivation, plus peace and quiet enough to plop another entry in here, I have a bunch of various items.

In the first news item — also related to this site’s Radio page — I am sad to announce that I discovered the demise of the great online station, Hit Parade Radio.  From the one small news report I was able to find about this, it seems that the station, also used as a syndicated service, lost its major financial backing and thus had to pull the plug.  While I am not big at all on these syndicated services that churn out the same programming all over the United States of America, this was a really good one as it had competent, live disk jockeys and an extremely wide oldies playlist.  In a world where so may great hits even of the 1970′s are being left behind and Michael Jackson is considered appropriate to play on oldies stations — especially those promoting themselves as being “family friendly” — syndicated service or not, Hit Parade Radio was badly needed.  Even though it was only around for a very short time, it will be sorely missed as what was probably the last big outlet that had not forgotten that there was a lot of great rock & roll made in the 1950′s and that one doesn’t have to be “old” to appreciate oldies.

In other news related to my Radio page, I am finally about to resume the second (and final) go-through of streaming US and Canadian radio stations to add in those I missed due to originally not realizing that there were some corrupted files on my computer preventing me from getting certain streams (thus making me believe that they were dead and passing over those potentially good stations).  This project will probably run between now and Thanksgiving, so keep an eye out for new additions.  This second go-through will also make sure that all of my links will be Linux-friendly because…

During the time that I was away from California, I finally started getting to my experiments with some of the latest distributions of the Linux operating system.  I have actually wanted to get my hands dirty with Linux for many, many years but always put it off as being too much of a hassle or getting me too far away from the many people I know that need help with Windows.  However, over the past year or so, I had continued to read about how one distribution in particular, Ubuntu, was extremely user-friendly.  To make a very long story as short as possible, I ended up finding a different distribution that I liked much better and should be usable by even the most “lay” of laymen.  It is called Linux Mint and, much to my surprise, it is now the fourth most popular operating system in the world behind Windows, Mac OS, and Ubuntu.  I highly recommend it especially for those that have older systems that seem to be running at least a little tired if not downright slow on Windows.  There is not anything one can do on Windows that cannot be done in Linux Mint…well, except waiting forever for the system to boot, taking memory-hogging patches every week, and pissing away more money that Bill Gates does not need.  Once people get over the perception that Linux is only for geeks and something free cannot be as good or actually better than something sold for far too much money, I can’t see how anybody would not fall in love with Linux Mint, Ubuntu, or any of the other new plethora of Linux distributions that work quite well right off the bat without having to learn any computer-speak.

Now that I am back in California after being suckered in by a job offer that never actually materialized, I am probably pretty much stuck here.  To be honest, I’m not all that disappointed.  I gave it my best shot in Oregon, Washington, and especially Colorado and, as I have always said even in my most frustrated moments with the Golden State, there are a lot of advantages to being here even in the worst of times.  I was not overall impressed with the scene in Oregon and I can definitely say without reservation that I now have Colorado completely out of my system (thanks mostly to the explosion of poor driving there that makes Californians in comparison look like the smartest and most courteous people on the roads).  I still like Washington a lot, especially the Olympia area, even though I would not be happy having to schlep over to an Indian reservation every time I want a carton of cigarettes or some hard liquor to avoid that state’s insane taxes on those “sinful” items.

On the employment front, things are just as bad in California as ever if not worse as so many people have become “99′ers” — those that have used up all 99 weeks of their unemployment insurance benefits.  I am getting painfully close to being a 99′er myself although I at least have what appears to be a solid fall-back position…which leads me to the fact that, while I am currently back in the Inland Empire again and will probably remain through the holiday season, I very well might end up elsewhere in the state in early 2011.  I will cover that story when it actually develops.

Where it will all lead, I cannot say.  I am certainly dismayed by this year’s election process in every state I have been in this year and have no hope that either the Democrats or Republicans will get things moving along again.  I also have no confidence that the people of this country will be ready any time soon to finally reject this broken, corrupt, unfair, and downright rigged process and start electing people not affiliated in any way with our major parties.  I still love the strategy and “horse race” part of our political process as I am endlessly fascinated by those that do it right and continually entertained by the majority that do it so badly.  However, I have so much frustration with the latest fad in American politics, the so-called “Tea Party” movement — probably the greatest political lie in this country since Bill Clinton said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky” — that I am about to finally take George Carlin‘s advice to just remove myself from the process and stop voting.  That will be hard for me to do as I still think this country is eminently salvageable and I have only failed to vote once since I turned 18 (and that was a puny election for only one school board position in Ontario, California and I just plain forgot about it).  Still, now that I am back in a failing state where the only two people we could get on the ballot to save it are the retreaded and still nutty Jerry Brown and the clueless corporate whore, Meg Whitman…well, I don’t see how I could be blamed for not wanting to bother filling out a ballot even to cast a protest vote for a third-party candidate.

Finally for now, for anybody reading this elsewhere whether it be in the United States or elsewhere, check out this report from our esteemed weekly CBS news program, 60 Minutes.  If you believe that Californians have such a high unemployment rate simply because they are lazy, untrained, or cannot make a decent resume, this should set the record straight.  The story can be read or the piece can be seen in full with the included video.

99 Weeks: When Unemployment Benefits Run Out – 60 Minutes – CBS News