Last Thursday, Betsie and I went to a book fair, sponsored by the local city library. At first, we were a bit dissapointed because the selection was a lot smaller than it's been in the past. But I did find a book that has proven to be very interesting. It's "The Life and Letters of Benjamin Franklin."

I don't usually read books like that, but as I stood there in the store, I started perusing the contents and noticed it contained President Franklin's Will, which immediately caught my attention. I bought the book and brought it home and have been reading it (very slowly) the past few days.

The Will itself is very interesting, and much could be learned of his life and beliefs just by reading this one document. What is most amazing is the foresight Ben Franklin had even in his Last Will and Testament.

Originally, the will set aside 2,000 pounds sterling to "to be employed for making the river Schuylkill navigable." However, he later ammended this request in a codicil stating:

But understanding since that such a work, and that the project is not likely to be undertaken for many years to come, and having entertained another idea, that I hope may be more extensively useful...

And his idea was, indeed a great deal more useful.

His plan was to donate 1,000 pounds sterling to Philadelphia and Boston each to be placed into an interest bearing account and loaned out to young men, who had already served as an apprentice, to help them start their own businesses. He had the foresight to realize if the program continued successfully, that eventually this account would develop into a nice amount of money. In fact, he estimated that at the end of one hundred years, there would be 131,000 pounds sterling in each account. Of that sum, he requested 100,000 be given to each city to be used to improve the city and the remaining 31,000 pounds put back into the accounts to continue the scholarship program for another hundred years. And at that time, now two hundred years after his death, he gave 1.61 million pounds to the city and the remaining 3 million to the state to do with as they please.

All this aroused my curiosity and I Googled "Boston Benjamin Franklin scholarship" and found out his plan worked! From CNN.com:

"Ben Frankin's dollars fund modern scholars"

It was not uncommon in Franklin's day for the well-to-do to leave large charitable bequests, and Franklin's was nowhere near the largest in Philadelphia's history. What was uncommon, Alviti said, was the way the bequest was structured, with very specific requirements at first, then an openness to new ideas over time.

Amazing. Talk about looking ahead...

From [Asphaleia](http://asphaleia.blogspot.com/2006/09/name-game-they-make-impressive-banners.html) (hat tip: [the ESV blog](http://www.esv.org/blog/2006/09/divine.names)):

According to [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial), "A memorial is an object served as a memory of something, usually a person (who has died) or an event."

A few tims in Scripture we see memorials raised. Jacob raised memorials on at least two occasions. After his dream of a ladder rising up to Heaven, he raised a stone and [called the place Bethel](http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=Genesis+28%3A18-22), which means "The House of God." And again after his covenant with [Laban](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laban_%28Bible%29) he raised several stones into a pile and [called the place "Galeed"](http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=Genesis+31%3A45-52), which means "The heap of witness."

[Bush's faith worries Albright - CNN.com](http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/05/22/albright.bush.reut/index.html?section=cnn_topstories)

>"President Bush's certitude about what he believes in, and the division between good and evil, is, I think, different," said Albright, who has just published a book on religion and world affairs. "The absolute truth is what makes Bush so worrying to some of us."

Quite a compliment...

[The Perfect Mark](http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060515fa_fact)

I knew [Phishing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing) was bad, but I had no idea how badly it could destroy someone's life quite like that.

I think the most amazing thing is, even after he was convicted, he **still** believed they really were going to send him a fortune....

Sadly, I suppose Ecclesiastes 5:10 would fit here...

>He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity.

via [Gadgetopia](http://www.gadgetopia.com/post/5288)

[Comcast to offer "Family Friendly" cable package](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,179536,00.html "Foxnews.com article")

From the article:

>The package will include 35 to 40 channels, most of them from the basic cable tier
of national and local broadcast channels. Other channels include Disney and Nickelodeon,
National Geographic, the Food Network, CNN Headline News and the Weather Channel.

On a related note, we've had family friendly broadcasting in our home for quite some time now.

I noticed this past week I had been running kernel 2.6.5 since 23 May 2004 and decided it was high time I updated my "toshiba laptop!":/archives/2004/05/26/gentoo/

So, this post is basically an update of my current config for whomever it might help.

Yes, I'm still running "Gentoo":http://www.gentoo.org and yes, it still rocks! :-)

**WARNING** Techinical article follows

You've been warned...
<!-- more -->

Current "kernel config file":/files/config-2.6.10-g2r6-01-Feb-05-jma.txt

In the past, I had also done a @make oldconfig@ and just worked with the differences. But there had been some errors on boot up with the last kernel, so I decided to start from scratch on this one.

**What Works/Doesn't Work**

|Built-in Wireless |(ok). OK|
|NVidia Drivers on X.org|(ok). OK|
|Touchpad |(ok). OK|
|USB Scroll Mouse |(ok). OK|
|USB Thumb Drive[1] |(ok). OK|
|DVD/CD-RW[1] |(ok). OK|
|Harman/Kardon speakers |(ok). OK|
|Modem[1] |(ok). OK|
|ACPI Battery applet |(ok). OK|
|fnfxd |(ok). OK|
|Firewire[2] |(maybe). Haven't tried|
|SD Card Reader[3] |(no). Haven't tried|
|IrDA[3] |(no). Haven't tried|
|Dual Display |(no). Not yet|

**Config Files and Scripts**

"Fnfxd gentoo init script":/files/fnfxd
Install "Fnfx(Toshiba Fn-Keys/Hotkeys for Linux)":http://fnfx.sourceforge.net just as normal and then copy the above file to @/etc/init.d/fnfxd@ and run as root @rc-update add fnfxd default@.

**Notes**

To use the NVidia drivers, add the line @media-video/nvidia-kernel ~x86@ and @media-video/nvidia-glx ~x86@ to your @/etc/portage/package.keywords@ file. Then @emerge nvidia-kernel nvidia-glx@ and enjoy.

**NVidia Update**

This last time I manually installed the NVidia drivers, and moved from 1.0-4496 to 1.0-6629 and __WOW__ what a difference! **Very** slick. My display is finally over 1024x768 and it has beautiful anti-aliasing. I haven't got it to work with OpenGL just yet, but I'm workin' on it.

As I have time, I will try and come back here and post more specifics on the more difficult (at least for me) parts of the setup. As always, YMMV

fn1. These devices worked when I was running Mandrake 9.2, so while I have not yet tried them under Gentoo, I have no reason to believe they won't work.

fn2. I believe the firewire will work, but I don't have any hardware to test that with. I haven't heard any reports that it doesn't work on this hardware

fn3. From everything I've read, these devices don't work under linux yet. So I haven't put a great deal of effort into making it work for me.

Woo Hoo!

It really shouldn't have taken me this long to get the "Coppermine Gallery":http://www.allensonthe.net/coppermine/ back up. All I had to was check the path in the database, and upload back to the correct path....sheesh.

Guess I was having an extended brainfart. Nonetheless, all previous images are available again.

In fact, I hope to have some pics up from Thanksgiving soon.

Whew!

This weekend AllensOnThe.Net moved servers and the restore process was not the smoothest I've ever seen. We had a lot more outage than I was expecting. But we are on a server now that has *a lot* more space than the old one. And it has some nice admin features I was really missing before.

There's still some "WP(WordPress)":http://www.wordpress.org plugins I need to fix after the move, but that will come soon enough.

But we're back up now, and the Coppermine gallery will be back online soon, too.

For the next few days the images portion of our site will be down due to some server upgrading.

Thanks for your patience.

If you really need to ask me questions about this, you can "contact me":/contact/?jonmark

Have a great Thanksgiving!