David Bottomley's Blog

As most of you know, our home near Evansville, Indiana is up for sale and we plan to move our family to Wyoming.  Many people unfamiliar with Wyoming ask "why" (usually by those who have never been there) and so rather than replying in an ad-hoc fashion, I thought it would be easier to answer "why" here in a comprehensive response.  Some of these reasons are specific to the area of Wyoming we are most interested in, namely Sheridan, Wyoming.  Without further ado, here is the list: Freedom.  According to most indices, Wyoming is among the freest states in the nation.  There are no firearm restrictions to speak of.  While they offer a handgun carry permit for purposes of reciprocity with other states, it's not required.  So long as you would qualify for the permit, you can carry without a permit in the state, open or concealed, just about anywhere.  Thanks to the 2010 change in federal law, that includes National Parks and Monuments, exclu...

From its earliest beginnings, the idea of America united the thirteen British Colonies.  There were many British subjects who took umbrage with the heavy hand of King George and the Crown's policies as they were were applied in the Colonies.  These frustrations accumulated over time to the point where they became intolerable and more and more Colonists decided they had had enough, until eventually they got together and decided to declare independence from Great Britain.  That idea, the spark that ignited what was to become the United States of America, was based on a set of shared principles and values.  Those principles are what have held Americans together as a nation all these years, and resulted in the most powerful and productive nation the world has ever seen.  Unfortunately, most of these principles have now been forgotten.  They are no longer taught, and the majority of voters no longer understand freedom, the Constitution (and thus the proper ...

"I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help me God."  These are the words you state when making a sworn testimony in a court of law, but the sentiment should not be limited to the courtroom.  I believe we should all conduct ourselves in such a manner that we are committed to always being honest and truthful, at all times.  That includes not spreading rumors or gossip that you don't know, based on the evidence, to be true.  "Do not spread false reports" Exodus 23:1 In today's world, we are inundated  with information: news, reports, stories, videos, images and more.  Clifford Stoll stated that " Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom."   Information is a good thing, but it must be distilled, verified, and validated before it graduates to become knowledge.  With such vast information comes an individual responsibility to research an...

To the "elites" in the political and financial classes of the world, there is nothing more important than ensuring that they have power over the political and financial systems that dominate the globe, so that they may continue to maintain their elite status by perpetuating their power, influence, and economic superiority over the rest of us.  History is replete with deceit and backroom deals made in the halls of power to that end.   In the nineteenth century, those halls were primarily within  the world's largest superpower, the British Empire.  There were, however, upstarts in Russia, Germany, and America that endangered that dominance, and so the elites were involved in affairs around the world, but particularly in those growing powers that threatened the dominance of the British Empire.  It made sense for them to hedge their bets, so they were not caught without a chair when the music stopped. Ultimately, in the twentieth century, power began to shif...

Being in IT for over 20 years, having been there, done that, I have seen just about everything under the sun in the IT industry, so it takes quite a bit to get me to 'geek out' and get excited about a solution, but Amazon AWS and Cloudberry Backup together create a very slick solution.   Previously, I used GreenGeeks for my web site hosting, and Crashplan for my backup service.  I had no issues with either service, but they were both coming up for renewal and since I had pre-paid for both services years in advance, I was losing the associated discounts, and both services would revert to $10 per month each.  Granted, that is not a lot in the enterprise world, but there is no sense paying more than necessary especially for personal and not professional use.   I run a Windows 2016 server at home for my home network- it controls Active Directory authentication for our family, DNS, DHCP, and is attached to a Drobo redundant storage device.  There are critic...

According to a Center for Immigration Studies report in 2017, 21.8 percent of US residents (67 million people) do not speak English at home.  That statistic has doubled in the last 27 years- it was 11 percent in 1980.  In America's five largest cities, 48 percent of residents now speak a language other than English at home.  Their report states that "In New York City and Houston it is 49 percent; in Los Angeles it is 59 percent; in Chicago it is 36 percent; and in Phoenix it is 38 percent."   " Of school-age children (5-17) who speak a foreign language at home, 85 percent were born in the United States."  " Of those who speak a foreign language at home, 25.9 million (39 percent) told the Census Bureau that they speak English less than very well." Those statistics should be alarming.  Don't get me wrong- in today's world of charged immigration politics, let me be very clear.  I have absolutely no issue with legal immigrants (and neither does...

"Don't be evil" was once the corporate motto of Google, from 2000 to 2015.  Many silicon valley companies were created with lofty goals and ideals, including Google's mission to index the world's information, protect the privacy of it's users, and respect content creators.   Sadly, Google, including it's subsidiaries such as Youtube (and even Blogger where I write this) have strayed from their worthy foundations and into the realm of evil.  Evil behavior clearly includes censoring the content of its users, even if that content is perfectly legal and ethical, but simply goes against the political beliefs of those in power at Google.  This level of interference in the free exchange of information, causes not only a direct effect in terms of censorship, but also an indirect and much father reaching chilling effect on content creators.  You would think "don't be evil" would not be a controversial corporate motto, but alas Google dropped the motto...

Americans, and in fact billions of people around the world, have experienced an explosion of obesity and disease over the past several decades.   Diseases such as t ype 2 diabetes, Alzheimers  (sometimes referred to as type 3 diabetes),  cardiovascular/heart disease, cancer, and ADHD / ADD are just a few of the diseases that have moved from being relatively rare as recently as the 1950s and 1960s to being very common.   What has changed?  In a word, diet.  The modern western diet, not to put too fine a point on it.  In the mid 1950s there were was a flawed study called the Seven Countries Study by Dr. Ancel Keys which proposed a hypothesis that saturated fat leads to cardiovascular disease.  Now, in retrospect and with additional study, we know that this is simply not true, but the damage was done.  The US government got on board and acted in multiple ways: 1. subsidizing sugar production 2. subsidizing corn production and utiliza...

The first gun control law in what would later become the United States was passed in the Virginia territory in 1640 that explicitly banned blacks from owning firearms, even if they weren't slaves.  In 1751 the French Black Code in Louisiana required any colonists to beat, and kill if necessary, "any black carrying any potential weapon, such as a cane."  Tennessee made it clear that blacks were not to be included under their Constitutional rights: "That the free  white  men of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defence."   New Spain in the sixteenth century prohibited all blacks, free or slave, from carrying arms, as well.  Gun control in America was clearly born of overtly racist origins. After the Civil War, the south had to make adjustments to their laws to appear to be race-neutral, but still effective in preventing blacks from owning firearms.  The former states of the Confederacy, that had previously recog...