7 years under Republican rule

I was thinking about what has happened over the last seven years under Bush and I'm not happy. It appears the country elected (although, there is some doubt about that) a former oil man to be president and what we got was more dependency on oil and higher oil prices. Screw the public.

We wanted a break from the corruption with Clinton (Monica-gate, Whitewater) and we wanted someone who obeys the law. We got missing e-mails, firing of attorneys, outing of spies, ballot stuffing, illegal wire tapping, torturing of suspects, privatization of warfare, meddling with scientific research, lack of fiscal discipline, and an administration that thinks they're above the law.

We're deeply in debt and have nothing to show for it other than a few thousand dead soldiers. The hundreds of billions of dollars spent could have done us some good. Perhaps healthcare, perhaps reducing energy dependence, perhaps paying off debt.

The only way to seriously make this country stronger is by starting to work on our addiction to oil. Oil is a scarce resource and with other economies (like China) growing and using more and more oil, the price of oil will remain high. If we reduce our dependency on oil, the price of oil will fall since we are the largest consumer. The drop in the cost of oil will cause problems for corrupt countries that are at odds with the US. (Iran, Venuzuela, Russia) These high oil prices only serve to make them stronger. It is certainly cheaper than invading them. We can be energy independent, but it'll take a lot of work. Higher CAFE standards, alternative sources of energy, and an administration committed to making this country strong instead of doling out largess to a select group of beneficiaries.

Frustrations with legally installing software.

I have a laptop that I'm getting rid of and I needed to wipe the current operating system (non-Windows) and put XP back on the laptop. The laptop came with a legal version of XP, but no installation CD. No problem, I have an MSDN copy of XP so I can install the software and it does install. However, I don't want my MSDN XP getting out into the wild so I just need to change my XP key. Microsoft graciously provides instructions on how to do it, but the instructions don't work because the MSDN XP does not recognize the OEM CD Key that came with the computer.

Searching the internet finds a whole host of information from "borrowing" a valid CD from a friend and using the key to downloading an ISO from bittorrent to do the installation. Now, I don't have any friends who have XP CD's laying around as computer makers don't ship CD's anymore with computers.

I'm currently stuck. I have a valid license, but no way to actually use the software. I've contacted the manufacturer so see if I can get a copy of the CD, but it's been a few years and I'm not hopeful.

It'll be easier to convince them to switch to Linux at this rate.