Hirosaki was under a clear blue sky when I boarded the first train out of town at 6:54 a.m. My destination was home to Niigata and I was hoping to hitchhike all the way back from Nagamine station, just 3 train stations from Hirosaki and right on Route 7, a straight shot to Niigata. It turned out I was able to hitchhike in 5 rides only as far as Akita City. It started to rain just before car #5 and was raining heavily when I arrived in Akita City, still 270 kilometers from home. Heavy rain means the train the rest of the journey.

Car #1: A young single lady who works at Furutobe Spa. She took me as far as Igarigaseki, about half way to Odate City.

Car #2: A middle age man to Odate.

Car #3: A truck driver to Takenosu, part way to Noshiro City. I was surprised he stopped. The truck carries Home Center supplies. It’s not very often for truck drivers to stop for me.

Car #4: A middle age lady driving a van to Higashi Noshiro. She past me by, turned around and offered me a ride. It’s not uncommon for drivers to turn around after considering for a few moments whether to pick me up. I explained to the lady some principles of my faith from the Book of Genesis. Favorite words in the Japanese language are “nature” and expressions of appreciation such as “thank you”. I told her that if Genesis 1:1 is true, and we are created beings by God, shouldn’t it be a part of our nature to say, “thank you” to our Creator for life and all things He created? She agreed and understood that point quite well!

Car #5: Mr. And Mrs. Sakurada of Noshiro City who took me to Akita station. Mr. Sakurada loves history and he was completely turned on when I explained to him the real reason the Japanese Tokugawa government of the 16th century began to persecute Christians in Nagasaki. It was not the true Gospel of Christ that the Tokugawa government feared, it was the influence of ROME, the Roman Catholic church, the Pope and the Jesuits!! The Japanese government knew the power of Rome and what the Pope did to Europe. The Nagasaki Christians they persecuted were all Roman Catholics, people who would have their ultimate allegiance to the Pope, not to the Japanese government. Tokugawa Iemitsu feared revolt. He feared Japan would become a colony of Rome. He therefore closed Japan to foreigners, but ESPECIALLY to Roman Catholic countries like Portugal. He had no problem with the English or Dutch because he knew they broke off from Rome after the Protestant reformation. I told that to the driver and it was like turning on a light in his head. He immediately put together the dots and was totally amazed!

“BBC’s killer documentary called “The Power of Nightmares“. Top CIA officials openly admit, Al-qaeda is a total and complete fabrication, never having existed at any time.” (Quote from: Top Ranking CIA Operatives Admit Al-qaeda Is a Complete Fabrication)

In 2010 while riding a train, I met a man from Pakistan. This was just after Terry Jones, the pastor of the Christian Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, U.S., announced he would burn 200 Qurans on the 2010 anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The Pakistani man asked me what I thought about it. I gave him a thumbs-down sign. I don’t think it’s good when people purposely antagonize those of a different culture or religion and make trouble. Besides that, I don’t even believe Osama Bin Laden or Al-Qaeda had anything to do with 911. It was a false flag operation to give G.W.B. the excuse to invade Afghanistan.

The young man from Pakistan then proceeded to tell me Al-Qaeda is not an actual organization. Calling a person in the Middle East a member of Al-Qaeda is like calling a Japanese person you think is a criminal a “Yakuza.” The person called a Yakuza may not even be a member of any organized Japanese mob, he may only appear to fit the type. Moreover, there are many different organized Japanese crime syndicates. Just saying “Yakuza” doesn’t pinpoint any particular one. The Pakistani man said the U.S. Government will call anyone it doesn’t like, “Al-qaeda.”

Alex jones says, “Al-qaeda was created by the CIA.” as if there is such an organization. This is a misleading statement! I believe “Al-Qaeda” to be CIA disinformation; it’s a pseudo organization that exists only in the mind, used for controlling the public and justifying aggression by the government.

Hirosaki castle

Saturday, April 28, 2012, I hitchhiked from Niigata to Hirosaki in Aomori Prefecture and visited beautiful Hirosaki Park. The cherry blossoms were in full bloom. The photo shows Hirosaki castle with some people in the foreground and the moon in its first quarter overhead. It was so to meet and talk to strangers! I talked to 8 different people. I met a man from Fukuoka who is a PHD university professor of mathematics. I told him that I consider math to be the language of God. Mathematics is part of design. I also soid that I believe the doctrine of evolution, i.e. life and organisms evolving into more and more complex designs, to be false science. If evolution is false science, branches of science such as biology, astronomy, archaeology, geology, etc. that have evolution as one its founding principles have been led astray. “There is no design without a Designer!” I said. He replied the chance of life evolving by accident is high but not zero. I said that reminds me of a comedy scene in a film when the man asks the girl he loves what his chances are with her, “Are they 1 out of a 100?” She replied, “One out of a million!” “You mean I have a CHANCE?” The professor acknowledged the man had no chance with her in real life. But when you talk about creation verses evolution, you are talking about real life.

On Wednesday, April 18th, I began another week long hitchhike adventure. This time I hitchhiked 1430 kilometers (894 miles) in 17 vehicles. Among these were only 2 trucks. The drivers and passengers consisted of 6 married couples, 1 single lady, and the rest male company employees. The total cost of the trip was about 10,000 yen or around $78 US. About 4000 yen was used for transportation in and around Tokyo. The Kanto area of which Tokyo is the center is always more expensive than Kansai (Kyoto / Osaka / Kobe) because it’s much larger and my destinations are usually from one end to the other. When in Kanto, time for me is more important than saving money by hitchhiking. It’s a nice place to visit, but I’m glad I don’t live there. I especially would not want to be in Tokyo in the event of a major earthquake!

My first stop was Shiojiri in Nagano Prefecture to see a dear friend, Esther who has stomach cancer. The second, Osaka to see a friend, and the third, Kanto, Tokyo and vicinity where I visited 5 different homes, fixed one PC, setup Skype on another PC, and attended an inspiring fellowship dinner with old and new friends.

Day 1, Wednesday April 18: Destination Shiojiri City, Nagano Prefecture

Car #1: An older couple who took me to Sanjo city. They stopped for me after a 30 minute wait. The wife was very talkative.

Car #2: Two young men (see photo) driving a truck on their way to Gifu. They are some kind of engineers fixing farm machinery. They dropped me off at Yoneyama SA on the Hokuriku expressway.

Car #3: Mr. and Mrs. Hamada from Mie Prefecture (see photo). They went to a spa in Niigata and stayed 3 days. The closest route to Mie Prefecture from Niigata is through Nagano and they would be passing the Midoroko Parking area! Esther’s house is close enough to walk to from Midoriko! Well, it’s still 4.5 kilometers and so I hitchhiked.

Car #4 An older man the 4.5 kilometers to Esther’s house. I spent 3 hours with her then took a train to Chino (because it was too late to hitchhike further) and stayed a night in Tateshina and another night in Fujimi Town with friends.

Day 3, Friday April 20. Destination Osaka:

Car #5 A truck from Suwa SA to Okurogawa PA on the Chou expressway. The driver’s company markets Shingen Mochi, a Japanese sweet made with rice. He gave me a box to give to friends.

Car #6 A foreign couple from Peru! It’s not often I meet foreigners. Neither of them could speak English and my high school Spanish is practically non-existent. I talked mostly with the wife all in Japanese. They were going just north of Nagoya, a bit out of my way. At first I asked them to drop me off at Enakyo SA because it is before a junction that goes south of Nagoya connecting to a faster route going to Osaka, but after 30 minutes of waiting for a ride and still nobody stopping, and because the Peru couple had stopped at Enakyo for lunch, I was able to catch them again before they left the service area and asked them to take me further to Uchitsutoge which is closer to Nagoya.

Car #7 Mr. Tanaka (see photo) to a bus stop just before Osaka! It was great to talk to Mr. Tanaka. He told me his wife is somewhat fearful every time he has to travel on business. He called her on his cell phone so I could introduce myself. I gave a Japanese New Testament to Mr. Tanaka to give to his wife and wrote a little message in the side cover for her.

Day 4, Saturday April 21. Destination Tokyo:

Car #8: The distance from Osaka to Tokyo was the longest leg of my journey, some 530 kilometers. I tried to get an early start and arrived at the Suita SA by 9 a.m. After a 30 minute wait two men on their way to Kyoto offered me a ride. One of them remarked he thought I was probably a Christian missionary of some sort. Both men were friendly and talkative. They took me to Katsuragawa Service close to Kyoto. Just before we parted, one man offered to buy me a cup of coffee but then gave me a 1000 yen bill instead! It’s not often drivers offer me money. Of course I never ask them for it.

Car #9 A friendly married couple to Otsu SA in Shiga Prefecture, just past Kyoto.

Car #10 Mr. Setto on is way back home to a city near Suwa in Nagano. At first I thought to go all the way with Mr. Setto to Nagano because it’s only 200 kilometers from Tokyo. But because it is on the Chou expressway and my destination is the end of the Tomei expressway, I decided to get off at the Owari Ichinomiya service area hoping for a ride toward Shizuoka on the Tomei.

Car #11 A man to Akahata PA on the Tomei expressway. It was a bit of a wait to meet him.

Car #12 Mr. and Mrs Maesada in their little car to Makinohara Service area in Shizuoka. It was such fun talking to them because they laughed often after hearing of my adventures. It could have been because I mentioned that the first driver today gave me a gift of money that Mr. Maesada pulled 3000 yen out of his walet and handed it to me! I felt embarrassed and said I don’t expect to receive money, I am thankful for just the ride, but Mr. Maesada insisted on giving it. Recieving a gift of cash from drivers twice in the same day is probably a first for me.

Car #13 Miss Tomoko (see photo) all the way to Tokyo! I had to wait a whole hour for Tomoko to come, but it was worth every minute! She was on her way back home to Saitama after surfing with a friend. Because she was going to Saitama, she would be getting off at Yoga, the end of the Tomei, which is exactly the place I would be meeting a friend. Tomoko listened attentively while I shared with her basic Bible stories from the Book of Genesis and the Gospels for the next 2.5 hours. I hope to continue to communicate with her through Facebook.

Day 7, Tuesday April 24. Destination Niigata and home:

Car #14: Mr. Nozaki who took me to Kamisato SA from Miyoshi SA on the Kanetsu Expressway. He said I’m the first foreigner he’s ever met. I hope to stay in touch with him.

Car #15: An elderly couple to Komayose PA just past Maebashi in Gunma Prefecture. The husband who drove seemed to have a hearing problem but his wife understood me better.

Car #16: A company president to Akagi Kogen. I bought lunch there, a bowl of curry rice.

Car #17: The final driver, Mr. Tanaka (the second Tanaka this trip, not related), is from Kawasaki and had an appointment in Niigata city after 5 p.m. He was the most interesting person yet to meet because though he said he is a member of Sokagakkai — a sect of Buddhism which is very aggressive in proselyting others to their cause — he did not push his religion on me at all. Instead he told me of his interest in the Bible. He likes the stories of the Old Testament, and is interested in learning more about Jesus Christ. Not only that, but Mr. Tanaka is one of those very rare Japanese who is very knowledgeable about the Freemasons, the Bilderbergers, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Illuminati, and even the Vatican / Jesuit connection! I asked him how he came to learn about the New World Order conspiracy of world take over. He replied that he thirsts for knowledge and spends much time in bookstores buying and reading any book he thinks can help him in his journey in life.

Mr. Tanaka graciously took me all the way to my home in Niigata city. It was not really out of the way for him, but because my area is far from the expressway, the detour added at least 30 more minutes to the arrival time of his destination. He said he would still arrive in time.

Cherry blossom viewing is extremely popular among all Japanese. Families and friends often have a picnic under the cherry trees in full bloom. They sit on tarps and eat lunch and or drink rice wine. When I left Niigata on April 18th, the cherry blossoms had not yet bloomed and I wondered if I would see them this year. Nagano is a bit further south but higher elevation and the cherry blossoms hadn’t bloomed there either. But both Osaka and Tokyo have already finished their cherry blossom season this year. When I returned to Niigata the following Tuesday, the cherry blossoms had bloomed and were 2 days past mid point. The blossoms last one week and at the time of this post are already nearly gone. I’ll have one more opportunity to see them in Hirosaki Park this coming Sunday, April 29. Hirosaki is 400 kilometers north of Niigata.

A dear lady friend in the USA urged me to listen to hours 2 and 3 of the March 27, 2012 Power Hour radio show broadcast hosted by Joyce Riley. She was afraid that I and my family were in extreme and imminent danger due to nuclear radiation contamination. She knows I live in an area that is neighbor to Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. After listening to what Joyce Riley and her callers were saying, I understood my friend’s concern! Click on the audio arrow to hear 1 minute and 45 seconds of the Power Hour, hour 3 of March 27th.

Joyce-Riley-The-Power-Hour-03-27-12-Hr-3

If Joyce Riley were saying those things last year March 2011 immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake, I might think she was giving accurate information. But I think for her to make such claims now is nothing but pure lies and fear-mongering!

I knew I could disprove at least one of her statements immediately. I called a friend who lives near Misawa AFB in Aomori Prefecture. He has close contacts with military personnel on the base. He reports no recent increase of military personnel sending their dependants back to the USA! I visited Misawa city last year and months after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. I saw little American kids with their parents at the Misawa city MacDonalds. Those children were of course dependants of US Air Force personnel stationed at the near by Misawa Air Base.

May 7 update:

The photo shows a man and his wife, their 3 children, and their 2 friends standing to the right and the left. The location of the photo is Hirosaki Park, Hirosaki City in Aomori Prefecture. The 3 men are USAF personnel from Misawa Air Force base in Aomori Prefecture. The lady and the 3 children are the dependents of one of the men, obviously the man holding the baby. This is positive visual proof for you that Joyce Riley was lying!!

When walking through Hirosaki Park last Saturday I saw many USAF people. I knew they were USAF because I was one of them at one time, and they were all young with short hair. The people in the photo confirmed to me that they are indeed from Misawa AFB and confirmed that there is no recent sudden repatriation of US military dependents in Japan.

Misawa is far more likely to get hit by radiation than my area of Niigata is because it is located northeast of Fukushima while I live west of Fukushima with a mountain range between me and the nuclear reactors. Also, wind blows from the west to the east in this part of Japan. There are no mountains to block radiation coming to Misawa from Fukushima. No repatriation of dependents means the USAF doesn’t consider radiation a threat at this time.

The claim about chaos and overly congested Japanese airports is also false. A young man I know flew from Tokyo International Airport (Narita) just a few days ago. He had no difficulty in getting and boarding a flight.

Moreover, if you are reading this 45 days from March 27, sometime past the middle of May 2012, and you haven’t been hearing of nuclear radioactive contamination to the point of massive evacuations from Japan and people dying by the scores, you can be absolutely certain that Joyce Riley’s program has no credibility whatsoever!

I smelled a rat as soon as I learned that the Power Hour is hosted on the Genesis Communications Network (GCN), so called “alternative media” that also hosts Alex Jones. GCN is affiliated with mainstream media ABC and ABC is owned by the Walt Disney Company! Whenever I think of ABC and especially Disney, I think of mind control, MK-ULTRA and disinformation. If you have a steady diet of either mainstream media or the compromised big name alternative media, and think you think for yourself and form your own opinions, think again. Those opinions were in all probability given to you.

“We are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species, but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time.” David M. Raup, University of Chicago paleontologist.”

I got this quote from: http://www.yah-tube.com/videos/scott/27_world_views_in_collision_p7/index.html

Read the truth exposing the pseudo-science of evolution: The Big Lie

On Monday, March 5th I received an assignment to build a new website, SongwriterMarie.com The next day it was live on the Internet. By Thursday all the material was posted and all the tweaks applied. My client was pleased I did it so quickly. This is all due to the ease of working with WordPress CMS, the power of Gimp (a free alternative to Photoshop), and a bit of knowledge gained from previous experience.

March 2, 2012: It’s been nearly two months since my last trip. Sometimes I wonder if getting older will discourage folks from picking me up, but this adventure proves to me otherwise. It was one of the least expensive considering the distance traveled. The round trip was 906 kilometers in 11 vehicles.

At 7:35 a.m. I began hitchhiking along route 345 from Majima station, just past Murakami. This road runs parallel to the Sea of Japan and very close to it. The day was sunny and views of the coast lovely. Only 10 minutes later a lady picked me up and took me as far as Sanboku, about 20 kilometers up the road and just before the connection to route 7, the main highway going north.

From Samboku I walked about 3.5 kilometers in 55 minutes to Fuya. There where several tunnels along the way. One was about 600 meters long, too long and dangerous to walk through seeing it had no sidewalk for pedestrians, and the traffic was medium. Adjacent to that tunnel closer to the coast was another tunnel that ran parallel to it. It was shorter and for some reason closed to traffic. I could see the end of the tunnel and hoped that there would be a road going further. I walked through it and found yet more short tunnels, all closed to traffic, and walked through them. All the way I saw no one but apparently some do walk through them because I saw footprints and bicycle tracks entering the tunnels. Finally I came back to the main highway, route 7, close to Fuya station. I walked to an intersection with a traffic signal and began hitchhiking again.

From Fuyu an older man took me to Atsumi Onsen, a tourist area with a large “Michi no Eki” or parking area with shops and restaurants.

From Atsumi Onsen a mother and son took me to Tsuruoka city, about 140 kilometers from home. Often I get stuck for a while at this point, but shortly afterward a truck driver took me to Sakata city, 20 kilometers further.

I’ve been stuck for a while at Sakata as well. The next large city is Akita, a good 80 kilometers away. But today a man coming all the way from Osaka picked me up when seeing my Akita sign, and it turned out he was traveling all the way to a town in Aomori right next to my destination! His name is Mr. Kajiwara, and we had a great conversation the entire trip, about 4 hours. He bought me lunch and took me to Hirosaki station, actual walking distance to the hotel where I stayed that night.

Mr. Shamsu from Afganistan

March 4, 2012: Hitchhiking from Aomori Prefecture on the way home to Niigata city, I arrived at Adatara service area by 1:30 p.m. This was record time, only 5 hours to travel 418 kilometers! It only took 3 vehicles with very little waiting time.

To catch a ride going toward Niigata from Adatara is the greatest challenge. This expressway service area is only 6 kilometers before the Koriyama junction with the Banetsu expressway going West, the direction I needed to travel, but the preponderance of the traffic would be going south, toward Tokyo. But since I arrived at Adatara so early, I took a 30-minute break to have lunch.

From 2 p.m. I began hitchhiking again. Once it took me 3 hours to catch a ride, but I learned a trick to speed up the process. Rather than hold out a Niigata sign, I used a sign that said “Aizu”, a populated area on the Banetsu expressway. The percentage of people going at least as far as Aizuwakamatsu city would be much higher than to Niigata.

After a few minutes, a foreigner driving a truck pulled up and offered me a ride. His face was definitely middle eastern. He asked me to guess his nationality. There are many Pakistanis living in Japan, a few Iranians, and even fewer people from Nepal and Bangladesh. I assumed he was probably from Pakistan. But “no,” he says, “I’m from the strongest nation on earth!”

Where on earth can that be? “You’re not from Iran? Bangladesh? Saudi Arabia?”

He shook his head no each time. “I’m from Afghanistan – the only nation on earth that the Super Powers could not conquer! We defeated, Britain, the Soviet Union, and now America in war!”

When I heard that, I immediately shook his hand. His name is Shamsu, meaning “sun” in the Afghan language. Shamsu was very friendly and likes Americans. He said it’s only American foreign policy he doesn’t like. I told him I share his opinion exactly.

Shamsu really wanted to talk to me more and continued to press me to get in his truck. I replied I needed to go home, to Niigata, not Tokyo. He said he would take me to a point on the expressway from where I could hitchhike easier to Niigata.

“You mean you’ll go out of your way and get me on the Banetsu expressway?”

“No, I can’t do that. I’ll take you to a service area just before the Banetsu expressway.”

“The service area we are now is it! If we go any further we will go past the Banetsu” I replied. And so Shamsu realized his time with me was over for now. Perhaps I’ll meet him again. He knows how to contact me. I gave him my business card.

March 15, 2012 update: Last night I phoned Shamsu to tell him my deep sorrow about the senseless murder of Afghan civilians by an American soldier last Sunday. He replied he understood fully it was an isolated incident. He has no bitter feelings toward Americans in general because of it.

I told him that certain powerful groups behind the scenes sometimes purposely cause trouble between cultures and nations. War is big business for capitalists. International bankers have financed both sides in conflict with each other. No matter which side wins, the bankers always profit. The bottom line in any war is greed and money.

Shamsu agrees with me.

I believe the value of the US dollar is about to crash to zero value shortly, possibly before the end of this year! My pastor, the Rev. David Berg, has been predicting this for decades. To show how close we are to this economic catastrophe, I thought the reader might be interested to see a graph of the rise of the price of gold in US dollar from 1900 to the present year of 2012.

All of the data except for this year was obtained from a PDF file on http://www.nma.org/pdf/gold/his_gold_prices.pdf.

The file shows the price of gold in USD from 1833 to 1913 to average $18.93 an oz.

The Federal Reserve Bank was created in 1913. In 1914 price of gold increased slightly by 7 cents. It continued to slowly increase, and by 1930, it was $20.65 an oz., $1.72 more than 1913, an increase of 9%. By 1935 the price of gold jumped to $34.84, an increase of $15.91 or a 84% increase from the 1913 price! I think the reason for the sudden increase in price is because President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed the anti gold hoarding act on April 5, 1933 forcing all Americans to sell their gold to the Federal Reserve Bank! Who profited by the sudden jump of the price of gold in USD? Of course the Federal Reserve Bank and it’s (mostly foreign) investors, not the average American.

The price of gold remained steady from 1935 to 1970 from $35 to $36 an oz but it suddenly jumps to $161 by 1975, an increase of $125 or 347%! This was after President Richard Nixon ended the gold standard on August 15, 1971. I believe the day Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard was a pronouncement of death to the American economy.

The graph is divided by 5 year points except for the last two years from 2010 to 2012. You can see a tremendous jump in price of gold in only 2 years. Think it will come down again? I think not.

Does this mean the value of gold has gone up? I really means the value of the $ has gone DOWN. The actual purchasing price of a bread with gold has remained fairly constant over thousands of years! It has hardly changed in the past 2500 years! See History of Gold Ounce Price Comparison To A Loaf Of Bread According to the author of that article,”the Old Testament states that in 600 BC, during the rein of King Nebuchadnezzar’s, a loaf of bread was worth 350 loafs of bread to one ounce of gold.” Today he estimates it to be 388 loafs of bread to one ounce of gold.

What does this all mean? I think it means if you possess any US currency of any significant amount, it would behoove you to use that money to buy something of more intrinsic value, a commodity that will not lose value due to inflation. Land or precious metals always a better investment.

In summary

Gold has not lost its intrinsic value over thousands of years! Paper currency always does and will continue to do so if not based on an absolute value.

Any corrections to this article are welcome and appreciated! Sometimes I ain’t real good in math. 🙂

March 17. 2012 update: According to goldprice.org/ the price of gold has dropped to $1659 from close to $1800 when I first made the graph above. Don’t think it will continue to drop! It won’t. The Dollar is about to crash. The price of gold in US currency is bound to rise again. You’d be wise to dump any US currency you have and invest in something of more intrinsic value, precious metals or property.

This post is aimed at Linux users, and especially at techies.

When Fedora 16 went gold on Nov. 8, 2011, I immediately installed it and used the new BTRFS for my /home partition. I read that BTRFS may become the default file system in Fedora and was under the assumption that BTRFS now had a good file system tool to fix errors. It turned out that I created an accident waiting to happen!

About a week later I learned that the file system checker program, btrfsck, was still in development, It could only identify file system errors not fix them. I thought to immediately reformat /home back to ext4 and start again, but I decided to wait. I had my fingers crossed that /home would survive till the time btrfsck would be perfected. No such fortune. /dev/sda1 that holds /home crashed yesterday, 97 days later.

Because I realized from early on I was running a risk of losing the data in /home partition to file system corruption. I made frequent backups of /home to a second internal HDD on my PC which is formatted in ext4. And I made a second backup to an external USB drive.

I tried in vain to fix the bad block on /dev/sda1 by downloading and running Fedora 17 Alpha thinking that may have a perfected btrfsck tool to fix the BTRFS partition. But I found that btrfsck still can’t fix errors. It turns out that btrfsck won’t even be ready for Fedora 17 and was pushed back to Fedora 18! Though I like keep up with bleeding edge Linux technology, I decided to wait for at least another year or more to try out BTRFS again.

You may wonder how much data I lost considering I lost my entire working /home partition — a first for me. I like to make regular backups of the entire /home partition to a second internal drive on my PC, and the last backup was fortunately only 10 days before the crash. I use Grsync to backup files. It’s an excellent backup tool because it synchronizes the target partition to the source. It copies only the newer files to the target partition, and deletes any old files on the target partition that no longer exist on the source partition.

So what did I lose between backups? No essential data whatsoever. Only 10 days of email (all of which I read and replied to), 3 files on one of my static websites which I was able to restore from the server, and 2 files of material to post on a website I am making for friends — material they can resend me.

Some of my friends have had total data loss when their hard disk failed. An investment of the purchase of an external USB HDD and regular backups to it can save you from this fate!

Watch even half of this 10 minute clip and you may avoid being deceived by the fantastic light show soon to appear in the sky over YOU!

The researcher of Project Blue Beam is Serge Monast, an investigative journalist from Quebec Canada. His article appears on http://educate-yourself.org/cn/projectbluebeam25jul05.shtml

I just read an article by blogger Christopher Knowles on blogspot.com claiming that Serge Monast’s Project Blue Beam was given to him by disinfo spooks! According to Knowles,

So in conclusion, all of the major claims made by Monast concerning “Project Blue Beam” have direct and well-documented antecedents in Star Trek, dating back to 1976. (from http://secretsun.blogspot.jp/2010/11/project-blue-beam-exposed.html)

But I say, so what? The creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, was a 33rd Degree Scottish-Rite Freemason. He therefore may have been an insider to Illuminati plans. George Orwell who wrote “1984” and “Animal Farm”, was also an insider to Illuminati plans. The same with Ayn Rand who wrote Atlas Shrugged. Aldous Huxley who wrote Brave New World was a Freemason. Is it any wonder the writings of these people are considered prophetic and insightful? It’s not that they had any special spiritual gifts to see the future, it’s because they were forecasting the devices of the Antichrist! (Daniel 11:24) They had inside knowledge of the Devil’s plans.

Just because Serge Monast’s Project Blue Beam has many similarities to scenes from Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek episodes doesn’t make it false or disinformation. If you don’t agree, ask yourself what could have been the motivation behind Project Blue Beam disinformation. I’m inclined to think it would be safer to believe it than doubt it.

From January 4 to January 8, I traveled to Osaka, Kobe, Hamamatsu (Shizuoka Prefecture), Tokyo, and back home to Niigata in 10 cars. The actual distance hitchhiked was 1386 kilometers.

It was a snowy day when I began my journey at 8AM. My destination was Osaka, some 580 kilometers from my home in Niigata city. I had some serious doubts I would make it. Over half of my route would be the Hokuetsu Expressway that runs parallel close to the Sea of Japan, and the Sea of Japan is often stormy in the winter. It sure was that day.

I believe that where God guides, He also provides. To test that, today I didn’t try to make it easier for myself by taking a short highway bus to the Sakae Parking area, but instead I hitchhiked at the Sanjo Tsubame IC. with the condition that if I was going to go to Osaka today, God would provide a good ride within the first hour or I would return home. Within 10 minutes a car pulled over and the driver said he was going to Kanazawa city in Ishikawa prefecture, just about half way to my destination! Now I knew for sure I was going to make it no matter what!

This is an technical article that only Linux users would understand and appreciate.

I like to secure the Grub boot loader to make it harder for anybody but me to get root access to my PC by either a cold startup, or rebooting the system. Grub version 1 had a password option. It was easily implemented by editing the grub.conf configuration file and adding the password option data. But in Fedora 16, Grub version 2 has replaced Grub 1, and Grub 2 doesn’t seem to have a password option. At least I haven’t figured it out yet. Moreover, Grub 2 makes it even more apparent how to get root access because it gives a system recovery option for each kernel version!

I learned by chance that changing the default Grub time out to 0 in Grub 2 prevents the Grub startup screen from showing even when purposely trying to show it by hitting the ESC key! Grub 1 did show the Grub options screen when hitting ESC just before booting the kernel even though its time out was set to 0, but Grub 2 does not show the Grub options when its time out is set to 0 no matter how many times I hit the ESC key, and even after repeated attempts!

Disclaimer: Do this at your own risk! Fedora does not recommend it because you have no option to use the previous kernel if a kernel update fails! However you can still use the recovery option from the installation DVD — if you know what you’re doing.

To change the default time out in Grub 2, from Terminal log in as a super user with the su command, and with your favorite editor load the /etc/default/grub file. I used Leafpad:

# leafpad /etc/default/grub

The first line has: GRUB_TIMEOUT=10
I changed the 10 to zero: GRUB_TIMEOUT=0

Next save the file, exit the editor and run the following command:

# grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Next time you boot your PC, you should not see the Grub screen again. Though you don’t have recovery options from the startup screen anymore, you can still use your Fedora installation disk for system recovery if you need to.

Just take a very close look at the figure and describe what you see! Click it to see an enlargement. Clicking the enlargement will make it yet larger to see more detail.

The figure is courtesy of Dr. Nakasato from Nagoya. I was introduced to him through my friend, Yoko Ishikawa of Tokyo.

As you can see, major features of Japan are relatively close in position to those features of other countries. For example, the largest lake in Japan, Lake Biwa, is close in position with the largest lake in the world, the Caspian Sea! Is this a coincidence? Or was it purposely designed by the Creator to show the importance of Japan in the final days of man’s rule on earth? All comments are welcome.

The graph shows the distances I traveled over the past 7 years in Japan by hitchhiking.

Since I’ve been keeping records from August 2003, the grand total of distance traveled is 124,321 kilometers in 2338 vehicles. As you can see, I traveled a bit further this year than last. But the prognosis for 2012 will probably be less traveling. I have more work locally.