About
My name is Tom. I’ve been using the handle “Beregond” in the online world since 1985. You’ll still find me hanging around on Twitter as @Beregond.
Beregond was a minor character in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In a world full of elves, dwarves, halflings, Ents, orcs, powerful wizards, kings of ancient lineage and mighty warriors out of legend, one ordinary man, doing what a man could do.
Beregonds Bar was the name of an online chat room I did for a couple of years on Q-Link, the original AOL service. It was a bit like Dungeons & Dragons crossed with Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon. It was hard to categorize, but drew a band of regulars and they made the real magic.
My work for the past several years has been in various Network Operation Centers, but I like to think about subjects well above my pay grade in the technical realm. I’m also a political junkie. I come by it honestly. When I was a small child my grandmother took me to help stuff envelopes for JFK. She seemed to hope that JFK would be the second coming of FDR. There was more fuss in the family over me changing parties than over cousins on both sides of the family who have changed religions.
I combined my technical geekdom with my political addiction to help some friends create From The Right Radio, a grassroots Internet radio station that is mainly conservative with a leaning towards libertarianism. For my sins I now bear the title of “Director of Broadcast Technology.” I’m one of the geeks behind the scenes that helps make the station go so that people with actual talent can be heard. From The Right Radio can be found at FTRRadio.com. You can also listen by downloading a SHOUTcast app for your iPhone, Android phone, or Palm Pre and searching for FTR Radio. Once you find us with your app be sure to bookmark us so you can find us again easily.
I’m on the board of FTRRadio.com. I own little piece of it. FTR is not a non-profit company, just unprofitable. We sometimes adopt causes or candidates. We aren’t paid for that. We do have ad space available for sale on the web site and on the air. Details are available at the station. We started FTR to make a difference. It would be nice if we got to be rich along the way, but none of us is planning on that (outside of an occasional day dream.) The FTR Radio ad that appears on each page is a freebie. FTR doesn’t have a sugar daddy.
Note the lower case “l” in “libertarian.” The large “L” Libertarians seem to me to mostly live in a world where principles trump reality. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have principles. Principles are CRITICAL. When we live in a world where the main political parties are the Conservative Party and the Libertarian Party I will be a Happy Camper. But we can only get there in steps. First we need to marginalize the political left. Right now the only tool large enough to do that is the Republican party. If the power structure of the Republican Party continues to fight us then it may be that another party may come into existence. I recently speculated about this in my post “Fish Rot from the Head; Political Parties Grow from the Roots.” However I think we’d be better off waiting to form a national Conservative Party or Tea Party or whatever it ends up being called until the Left is marginalized. Then we’ll have the luxury of being able to squabble over the spoils. To reduce the difference between Small-l libertarians and Big-L Libertarians in short and pithy form go here.
Actual personal stuff? I’m a widower in my mid fifties with no kids. I live in North Carolina. I hobble around with a cane (a walker if there is ice or snow, falling SUCKS) due to complications from my left kidney trying to kill me a few years ago. I love to read science fiction and fantasy. If you’re familiar with Baen Books then you perhaps understand my tastes. Music? Rock by musicians that were trained as classical musicians, such as YES, and Emerson Lake & Palmer. Also some classical. I’m a firm believer in Sturgeon’s Law, “Ninety percent of everything is crud.” When I find the other ten percent I’m delighted. You can read a bit more about me in this post.
A note about ads on this blog:
This is my personal blog. It’s for me to talk about what interests me. That having been said, I’m also a capitalist. I don’t expect to get rich, but if I can break even on operating costs it would be nice.
Some of the links here have a double underline. These links are part of a pay per click advertising program called Infolinks. Infolinks is an In Text advertising service: they take my text and create links within it. If you hover with your mouse over these double underlined links, you will see a small dialog box containing advertisement related to the text marked. You can choose to either move the mouse away and go on with your browsing, or to press on the box and go to the ad page which is relevant to the text. Click here to learn more about Infolinks Double Underline Link Ads.
Since the last update I’ve added some ads for products that deal with various computer operating system problems. These are currently in the bar across the top just below the Navigation Bar. They are from a number of different sellers. I haven’t tried them. The company that handles the sales weeds out products that get too many complaints, and makes people pay to keep products that don’t sell in their listing. The site handling the sales has a return policy. The market should weed out the bad apples, but you should do a bit of research and use your own best judgement. In this process Google is your friend. If you do buy from a link here I will get some of the money in around 3-4 months, assuming you haven’t asked for a refund.
Speaking of Google, I added ads from Google AdSense. In theory, Google will scan the text of the blog and present ads that are relevant. However, computers are stupid, and the results are sometimes comical, and once in a while an unfortunate and offensive combination might happen. It may have been fixed by now, but I once saw an ad for abortion services served next to an article about rape victims who became pregnant deciding whether to give the baby up for adoption or keep it. This happened at a Christian site that was decidedly pro-life, and caused a great deal of anguish. I’m sure Google is paying people a lot of money to try to make the results better. I don’t think Google loves us; I think Google wants to produce better results so they can charge advertisers more. In this case the market is your friend. And speaking of the market, if you decide that you want to follow one of those ads somewhere I will get some money for it somewhere down the road. Don’t click on an ad because you want to be nice to me, that would be defrauding Google. Only click if you’re interested.
The FTR Radio ad in the top right corner is a freebie. I don’t get anything if you click on it. However, if you follow the link to FTRRadio.com, look around, listen, hit the tip jar and help spread the word you’ll bring the station closer to the day that it breaks even, can pay for upgrades, and help spread the word.
Last Updated 08/25/2010
