3DWannabe Blog

RAID’s work!

A few days ago my mouth went dry, panic began to well up inside of me. I store all my graphic assets on a network drive so I can access them from multiple computers. It’s been great for the last couple of years. I got the 1 TB unit on sale at Best Buy for $230 and set it up as a RAID 1, which mirrors your data on two internal drives.

Sunday it took FOREVER to access a file. I ran the disk manager and the DRIVE A FAILED message chilled my soul. Every model I’ve ever made was on that drive. Every render I’ve done. Assets and tutorials I paid more money than my wife knows about, all on that drive.  With not much confidence I told the unit to copy everything to my system hard drive. In theory, everything was on drive b, just not efficiently, the auto backup is the whole point of a RAID 1 setup.

IT WORKED!!!!! It took 24 hours, but it’s all safely on another drive, two other drives actually, and a replacement raid drive is on it’s way. Ahhhhhhh……

New model

A new model I’ll be adding to the free stuff link on the right. It’s a lightwave model, needed a tablet for a render and didn’t have one. Let me know if you use it, or any other feed back.

Almost there…..

I’ve heard a lot of teeth gnashing over the White House attacking Fox News. Everything they are doing is obviously trying to marginalize Fox, which has been the only mass-market organization to not join the Obama band-wagon. I’ve read articles about how this is the end of free speech. I’ve heard still others that predict Fox’s future is bleak because it’s the President who is doing the talking and people will listen.

Personally I look at this as great news! For 10 months this administration and the Democratic party have completely ignored anyone that doesn’t agree with them with an arrogance I’ve never seen before. They’ve never stopped to answer the many legitimate questions people have about health care reform and cap & trade because they were sure they didn’t have to. That you, the people of the United States, were merely sheep looking to be led by them. (Make no mistake, Obama / Pelosi / Reid do not think you are capable or qualified to think or decide for yourself) Thanks to Fox News we know that there are questions that need to be asked. It’s up to us to make sure they get answered.

It’s time to re-double all efforts to bring the truth to forefront. It’s time to demand that bills be made available to the public at least 72 hours before a vote so the people can let their representatives know what they think about it. It’s time to ask the hard questions on how they will pay for it before passage. It’s time to demand that the president makes himself available to answer the questions put to him, rather than just publish the same campaign rhetoric that we’ve heard for 2 years running. The chafing from the Obama administration means that Fox has finally gotten their fingernails under the lid and that they realize that people are noticing the lack of answers coming from Washington. Unfortunately Obama’s reaction is to attack Fox News rather than to engage the opposition and answer any questions.

When you hear Obama and other deride Fox News, just remember some of the things that the ‘real’ news organizations would never have told you:

• Acorn gives tax advice to illegal activities
• Obama press secretary Anita Dunn’s favorite philosopher is Chairman Mao
• That Obama appointed Van Jones to a green jobs position and that he is an admitted communist.
• The seemingly endless stream of Obama appointees with tax problems. Including the one in charge of the IRS.
• All the favors Chris Dodd has done for the financial institutions that fall under the committee he chairs, and the favors he received in return. (You or I would be in jail)
• Barney Frank’s demand of favors to him from bailout companies.

…. and the list goes on. I’m interested in these things, even if Obama isn’t. Even if CNN, MSNBC and the others aren’t. Every one of these stories was dismissed and denied until Fox wouldn’t let them go and the truth came out.

Marginalized or not, Fox is the only news source with the integrity to report on stories like these. The other networks have equity in the Obama presidency, with their main reporters and commentators having openly endorsed him. (Chris Mathews, Fareed Zakaria to name a couple) You will NOT get reporting from these people, you will get cheerleading. Chris Mathews went as far as to say that he thought it was the medias duty to support Obama and his agenda. I repeat, you will NOT get reporting from these people.

In his best campaign rhetoric, Obama says that the case is clear, the evidence overwhelming for his agenda. If this is true he should have no fear to go anywhere, anytime to present his case, It up to us to demand that he does. It’s up to the media to investigate if he’s telling the truth. Which organization do you want to trust to do that?

BOP Image ready

Spent a few hours with Paint Shop Pro. Grabbed the image from the schematics of the ship. cleaned it up and gave it the right orange color. Looks pretty good, hopes are high.

UV or not to UV?

Well, I’m making a real effort to understand UV mapping, instead of just using them and being amazed it worked. I’m watching the basic uv mapping videos from kurv studios. A lot of great info, but some really weird stuff as well. Weight maps, layers and additional geometry to make a uv you can’t see unless you render instead of just making new surface? Really? But I am picking up quite a bit. Then I figured out how to use the PLG uv plugin. Why newtek doesn’t buy this one and throw it in the box I’ll never know. (maybe not even buy, just ask?) Really makes atlas mapping easy compared to the standard tools! Now, back to the warbird model….

Paradigm Shift

While we have seen evidence in the past of the schism between the right and the left, it has never become as clear and defined as it has during the debate on Obamacare and nationalized health care in general. It often strikes me as amazing how people can look at the same question in the same setting and come up with such different answers. Clearly there is a difference in the base definitions that the two sides are using and how they see the world. I was listening to a radio program the other day that helped me understand it. It was a right wing radio host interviewing a left wing book author and the host asked if he supported Obamacare. Predictably the answer was yes, but it was the reason why that was interesting. The author said he believed that it was part of doing what the US Constitution prescribed, to provide for the common welfare. The radio host corrected him and quoted the correct language, that the government is to PROMOTE the common welfare, but it had no effect on the author. That an author, someone who makes their living with words, would completely disregard the differences between “provide” and “promote” is perhaps a ponter as to why people who read the constitution see issues differently than those who interpret the constitution, such as the book author in this interview. (Link to the US Constitution is in the upper right corner if you would like to see it.)

The definitions…
Promote: contribute to the progress or growth of
Provide: give something useful or necessary to

Synonyms for these words……
Promote:Advance, Boost, Further, Encourage
Provide: Supply, Render, Furnish

If, and this is another question, the American people decide that it is in the general welfare for everyone to have health insurance, the governments role is not to provide it, but rather to encourage it and help it become available. Nothing in the constitution says anything about taxing everyone to provide heath insurance to those that don’t have it.

There are examples of the government looking out for the general welfare in a positive way. The interstate highway system in an excellent example of the government promoting the general welfare. This system opened up opportunities across the country, single handedly creating new industries and jobs. (Not without a cost however. It also brought about the demise of the local economy since it was now just as fast and even cheaper to buy from across the country) In the early history of the United States this clause in the constitution was used to promote the growth of the country and providing it’s citizens with opportunities through actions such as the Lousiana Purchase and other land annexations that eventually redefined the United States’ borders.

On the other side we have examples of the government providing for the common welfare and they are all disasters. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Public Housing, the list of failures is as long as the list of attempts. I would prefer that the federal government start to act on the issues that the constitution requires, securing the borders from terrorists and illegal entry, defense and insuring our freedoms are protected and apply to every citizen. Leave the rest to us, the States and the People.

Wilson was wrong?

Here is a pretty good article that states at the beginning that he was wrong to call Obama a liar. The rest of the article goes on to explain why he wasn’t wrong. I’m not sure how they can make the first statement knowing what they clearly know….
Link to Original Story

WASHINGTON – Rep. Joe Wilson is wrong.

In his speech to Congress Wednesday, President Barack Obama said the changes to health care that he’s proposing “would not apply to those who are here illegally.” That prompted Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, to shout “You lie!” from his seat in the House chamber. Wilson later apologized for the outburst, but he didn’t back down from his claim.

THE FACTS: The House version of the health care bill explicitly prohibits spending any federal money to help illegal immigrants get health care coverage. Illegal immigrants could buy private health insurance, as many do now, and they could also buy into a new government-run insurance plan if Congress creates one. But unlike legal residents, they wouldn’t get federal subsidies to help them. The bill’s exact language: “Nothing in this subtitle shall allow federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully in the United States.” Health care legislation in the Senate is also being crafted to exclude illegal immigrants from coverage.

However, Wilson is far from alone in thinking that the prohibition in the House bill doesn’t go far enough. For him and other Republicans, the problem is not what’s in the bill, it’s what the bill leaves out. There’s no provision for how the prohibition would be enforced, or any requirement for people to prove they are citizens or legal residents before getting health care benefits. In fact, Democrats on the Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means committees defeated Republican-offered amendments that would have required people to verify their legal status before getting care, with some Democrats saying such requirements would be unnecessarily burdensome for people legally entitled to coverage. Wilson cited the defeat of those two amendments Thursday when he discussed his outburst with reporters.

“I will tell you this, that it was spontaneous. It was when he stated, as he did, about not covering illegal aliens, when I knew we’d had those two amendments,” Wilson said.

Chappaquiddick would have destroyed a better man…

Time to let your feelings be known!

There is a protest scheduled for tomorrow that is being supported by the groups that setup the original tea parties.  See you there?

Representative Gary Peters (D – 09)

The rally for this district will not be held at the congressional office, but in an alternate location:
- Location: Intersection of Woodward Ave. & Old Woodward Ave. (south of Maple Rd.), Birmingham, MI 48009
- Time: Noon
- Contact: Lynn Ellen
- Email: lynn@actionstrat.com

Just how stupid is Massachusetts?

Barney Frank has already weighed in on the question. He thinks the people from his state are from another planet and says talking to them is like talking to a dining room table. And that’s on the record, we’ll just have to guess what he says behind closed doors.  Well, he may prove to be right if the people of his state let the latest amazing bit of Washington double-speak pass.

Ted Kennedy is now asking that the law be changed in Massachusetts to allow the governor to appoint an interim Senator in case he dies during his term. It’s just to important a time in history to allow the system to take it’s time in selecting a replacement according to Ted. The system is to have an election to fill the spot, you know, let the people decide.

Here is the amazing thing… These are the same Democrats who in 2004 said it was too important a decision to have one man make the appointment. This is a democracy they said, the people must make this decision. They campaigned to change the laws to mandate an interim election in case a senator left office early.

What was the policy before 2004? It was to have the governor make the appointment. The only difference is that in 2004 the governor was a Republican, now it is a Democrat. Talk about wanting your cake and eating it too! You would really have to be an idiot to fall for that one again.

So, soon we’ll all know just how stupid the people of Massachusetts really are, Barney and Ted have sure let us know what they think. What are the odds they’re wrong?