The Rabid Quill

Only days ago, Google engineer Vijay Boyapati began organizing Operation Live Free or Die, an attempt to marshal volunteers from across the country for one last surge of campaigning in New Hampshire. He wants 1,000 people and plans on them being able to stay in New Hampshire for a week, spending their time canvassing for the Paul campaign. It will all culminate in an escalating series of rallies in the major cities, the last of which being in Manchester.

This endeavor may, in my opinion, be one of the most important things anyone can do for the Ron Paul campaign. Operation Live Free or Die has such a huge significance for a few very simple reasons:

1. The Principle of Primacy

Human memory, and perceptions and impressions are rather malleable things. One principle of memory is that you are more likely to remember that which is most recent. It sounds obvious, but it’s an important principle to be aware of. When given a list like a menu, people usually remember either the first or last thing on that list and will choose one of those. The same goes for an election. The two factors that will weigh most heavily on the run-of-the-mill voter’s mind are his first impression of the candidate, and his most recent impression of the candidate. Operation Live Free or Die can produce a massive and very positive recent impression of Ron Paul to many, many Granite Staters.

2. Newsworthiness

It is almost guaranteed to get news coverage, thus catapulting the exposure and the strength of point number one even further. News outlets, when gaging a potential story, and when writing a story, look first at the “Five W’s” of the event: Who, What, Where, When, and Why. If the answers to enough of those questions are compelling, it’s a good news story. Those Five W’s are used frequently to construct the first sentence of the story, so readers can assimilate it quickly. Consider the Five W’s of Operation Live Free or Die and the sentence they would produce.

Who: A Google Engineer (Vijay Boyapati) and 1,000 people from across the country…
What: …are canvassing and holding huge rallies for Ron Paul, all at their own expense…
Where: …in New Hampshire, the first and often most important primary state…
When: …for an entire week before the primary election…
Why: …to help their man, Ron Paul, get elected in the New Hampshire primary.

Most reporters will be paying attention once they see the word “Google.” And it’s all downhill from there. This is an unprecedented burst of presidential campaign activism. It will make it on the news. Probably national news, but all we need is the attention of the local news.

3. The High Value to the Campaign

A volunteer on the ground is worth $500/day to a campaign. They are probably even more precious to the Ron Paul campaign, which depends heavily on its frugality and volunteer activism. Even if traveling out to New Hampshire for a week costs you $1,000, you will have contributed a value of over $2,000 to the campaign. Think of it as giving to Ron Paul at a 50% discount. If the project gets 1,000 participants, it will be worth about $2,000,000 (that’s two million dollars) to the campaign. In one week. Folks, this is a no-brainer.

4. Viability

Operation Live Free or Die is 100% doable. I’m surprised Vijay’s projection is for 1,000 people and not 5,000. There is an existing camp of pro-liberty activists already living in New Hampshire. They are called the Free State Project. Originally the FSP only planned on having Free Staters move to New Hampshire and simply vote. Instead, they got a crop very dense with activists. Free Staters routinely make it on the New Hampshire news. New Hampshire is not just Ron Paul “friendly” territory. It is heavily so, and there are already reliable advocates living in the state who can help us.

5. Likelihood of Success

This operation has excellent key ingredients: The timing, the newsworthiness, the strength of an impression it will leave. It will open minds at just the right moment, it will get exposure. It can launch the campaign roaring not only into the top tier, but into victory. And it can be done. This is not just another rally-and-canvassing weekend like what so many of the Ron Paul Meetup groups out there are so successfully doing. This is a potentially historic event, and if enough of us just show up, it will be. This could be the moment, the tipping point where Americans already awake from the nightmare of terrorism hysteria and the dreamland of government dependence, stand up at last and speak up too loudly to be ignored, We Will Live Free or Die!

To borrow from Patrick Henry: It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, “Peace! Peace!” — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

Like us, Mr. Henry and his people were backed into a corner. They were ignored, unrepresented, and taken advantage of in a government that cared nothing for their liberty, cared nothing about their dignity as human beings. This is very similar to our own situation. For so many election cycles we’ve been given a choice between Dumb and Dumber, a Turd Sandwich and a Giant Douche, one evil versus a lesser one. The system is stacked against us! The war is already on! Is there any question that those bureaucrats in D.C. would tread on you without batting an eye?

Operation Live Free or Die can be as moving an event as Patrick Henry’s speech was to the Virginia legislature. Yet how moving of a speech was it? His speech urging Virginia to prepare for defense against the British only swayed a scant few votes, and his motion passed by only the slimmest majority.

But we don’t even need a majority to win the New Hampshire primary.

After a little fiddling, I got all of the basic hardware (sound, video, wireless) functioning on my ThinkPad T61p under openSUSE 10.3. I stepped down to the 32-bit version in order to ensure the broadest possible compatibility. There isn’t a whole lot written for 64-bit operating systems on the desktop yet. In particular, running in 64-bit mode was making it just about impossible for Flash and Java to work on my web browser.

But once the basic functions of the computer were checking out, I had to see whether or not it would be an acceptable replacement for Windows. There are a number of things I must do with this computer, and what OS I ultimately settle with will be dictated by which ones satisfy my requirements. As of Monday that list was satisfied in its entirety. One little workaround was all it took to get the Java-based TalkShoe client out of Windows and into Linux. The list of features I needed, along with the Linux applications that satisfied them, is as follows:

• A photo manager: F-Spot or Picasa, haven’t made up my mind
• A photo editor: GIMP
• Sound recording and editing: Audacity
• Firewire video capture: Kino
• Video editing: Kino, and soon Cinelerra
• A music manager: Banshee
• Compatibility with at least one online music store: eMusic, to which I already subscribe
• A smooth operating desktop environment: Compiz Fusion; even though my brand-new video hardware is not fully supported, it works splendidly.
• The ability to run the TalkShoe Live! client: It’s written in Java; No Worries!
  

I am genuinely surprised and impressed with how far Linux has come since I last used it. No matter how fast my computer was the GUI always seemed oppressively slow, but this is no longer an issue. It has even been drastically improved cosmetically thanks to the 3D-accelerated desktop features in Compiz Fusion. Hardware support was always spotty under Linux, especially on laptops. Yet somehow almost everything worked, right out of the box, on my brand new T61p. WiFi and sound took some jimmying because the defaults were wrong, but other than that, everything down to the SD Card slot is working just fine. I fully intend to treat openSUSE 10.3 as my permanent OS. I will not do what I used to do with Linux distributions and switch to a different distro frivolously. I have too much to do nowadays to let my computer spend half its time installing operating systems. The only conceivable switch would be from openSUSE to Ubuntu, only because the community surrounding it appears much larger, and the software compatibility is potentially more broad. But I can’t be sure that all the things that are currently working on my system now will work under Ubuntu, so I am committing to openSUSE.

With the Windows compatibility software out there now for Linux, the only thing holding anyone back from making the switch to is their own personal preference, and how attached they are to the remaining Windows-only applications.

So, barring the arrival of some killer app that requires Windows, my Windows XP Professional CD is going to collect dust in the closet. Though I should probably contact Lenovo soon while I’m still under warranty so I can get that Vista backup just in case I want it later.

I have been using a Mac, an iBook to be specific, for the last few years. It’s been a great machine, capable of doing whatever I throw at it — albeit slowly — but it lacked one key feature. There was something I could do to all my previous PC desktops, but not to the iBook.

I couldn’t break it.

So naturally when I upgraded, I chose a rather nice Lenovo ThinkPad T61p. And as soon as I could I set about breaking it.

The other day I decided it would be cool to try openSUSE Linux on my brand new ThinkPad. ThinkPads are actually certified to run the enterprise version of SUSE, so I figured it would be a good fit. It was also the last of not many options, since Fedora and Ubuntu boot discs were almost non-operational.

The Lenovo software included with the ThinkPad allowed me to make backup media. Until I found this tool, I was very disappointed with Lenovo’s failure to include discs of any kind with the computer. Everything for system recovery was stored on an extra partition on the hard drive. That makes for rapid system restores, but I like having ALL of the hard drive to work with, thank you very much.

I used the “create backup media” tool and wound up with 10 CD-ROMs filled with all the odds and ends the computer originally came with, and figured I was good. I tried to install the new Linux OS and only succeeded in corrupting the Windows partition. You see, the SUSE installer suggested it shrink the Windows partition so that it could install SUSE next to it, allowing me to dual-boot. The software failed, probably because of the unfamiliar proprietary Vista filesystem. I thought fine, I’ll just delete the Windows partition altogether and start from scratch.

But I could only do that if I deleted the backup partition too. I figured that should be OK since I just made 10 whole CD-ROMs to help me restore the system.

I should have tested them out first.

Long story short, openSUSE 10.2 left me with no sound and not all the functionality with the pointing devices that I wanted. I probably should have spent more time tweaking and troubleshooting because those problems crop up often in Linux and are typically fixable.

Nevertheless, I found myself unable to restore Windows Vista Home Premium because… drumroll please… those 10, that’s ten (TEN!!!), CDs only contained application backups and no operating system! So it looks like Windows Vista is gone forever until I pester Lenovo for a restore disc or buy another copy (for $250, fax you Microsoft!). I tried using my Windows XP Professional installation disc, but it couldn’t see the ThinkPad’s hard drive!

But there is hope; openSUSE 10.3 is out now. Even though it’s just a point-release, hearsay tells me it works splendidly on my model of ThinkPad, and with a little elbow grease I’ll even have it editing video.

So I’m installing that, and the good news is that I know how to make everything I previously used in Windows work on Linux — even the TalkShoe podcasting client.

In all fairness it really isn’t broken. I’ve been in love with Linux for a long time. I used it for a year straight once. It has been a source of some annoyance that I haven’t been able to use it as my primary OS for so long. Because this isn’t Ubuntu it’s going to take a while to set up everything just the way I like it. But the advantage with Linux is that once it’s running, it can stay that way forever, and even if something does go wrong, you’re empowered to fix it, not cowering in a corner until Tech Support calls back.

I’ve subscribed to a mailing list for Linux on ThinkPads, and hopefully if I run into any snags they’ll be able to help me.  I’m happy it’s SUSE though, that works well with ThinkPads. The last time I really used SUSE was version 8.2, well before the Novell buyout. It was fantastic then and from what I’ve seen so far it has only improved.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.