Someone lit themselves on fire outside the Cheshire County Superior Court yesterday, in Keene, NH. On the police scanner, the KPD mentioned finding a car nearby that could have been his, registered to a Thomas Ball in Massachusetts. A Thomas Ball, from Massachusetts was involved in a court case around 2007: “Thomas Ball v Monadnock Family Services” A Thomas Ball from Mass. Also signed an online petition here: http://bit.ly/lykCr0, where he states:

The authorities are forcing parents to choice between the loyalty to their families and the loyalty to our government. The government will lose this type of contest.

It is likely that Thomas Ball lost this court case and felt it was an extreme injustice, especially if it involved his children and possibly loosing custody of them.

UPDATE: There is a facebook group scheduled to be archived that was created to provide “Help for men, and women, arrested for domestic violence. Shared parenting for divorced parents.” It is admin’d by a Thomas Ball, whose profile is here: Thomas Ball.

He also appears to have run a website: http://jimbrownprinciple.com which is the only reference to the case “Thomas Ball v. Monadnock Family Services” but is no longer online.

UPDATE 2: Thomas’ Ball’s story about Monadnock Family Services (PDF) (Google Cache Link)

UPDATE 3: Keene Sentinel Posts his suicide note: (PDF) (Keene Sentinel)

UPDATE 4: FreeKeene has copies of the motions, lawsuits etc. over here: Thomas James Ball Self-Immolated in Protest of the “Justice” System

1 Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of cloth, whose height was onescore cubits, and the breadth thereof two score: he set it up on a stick, in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.

2 Then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent to gather together the princes, the governors, and the captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, to come to the dedication of the image of cloth which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.

3 Then the princes, the governors, and captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, were gathered together unto the dedication of the image of cloth that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up; and they stood before the cloth that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

4Then an herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O people, nations, and languages,

5 That at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of star spangled musick, ye fall down and worship the cloth image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up:

6 And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth, and pledgeth allegiance shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.

7 Therefore at that time, when all the people heard the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and all kinds of musick, all the people, the nations, and the languages, fell down and worshipped the cloth image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.

Gnome 3 has a wonderful UI, but one glaring fault. The top system bar serves as a “title bar” for your current application, telling you what app you have open, and allowing you to exit the application from the bar itself. Unfortunately, the default theme, Adwaita, has huge looking titlebars, which don’t really get in the way when you are working in normal sized windows. When the windows are maximized though, you have 2 titlebars taking up precious screen realestate: the big Adwaita titlebar, and the system bar up top.

Two Title Bars eating up my screen, providing useless duplicate information.

Open your Adwaita xml (/usr/share/themes/Adwaita/metacity-1/metacity-theme-3.xml) file and change the line that configures the maximized window (name=”max”). Add has_title=”false” to the “frame_geometry” tag. Then look for “title_vertical_pad”, and change “value=9″ to value=”1″. Restart Gnome 3 and maximize a window. *poof* the UI makes sense now.

No more evil redundancy eating up my screen

I’ve been slightly silently working on a project that I’ve now placed on Kickstarter. It’s a decentralized emergency dispatch network that can be run by communities and groups apart from 911. The decentralized approach prevents disasters from completely disabling it, or governments from blocking access. This also allows for municipalities to be less tied up in emergencies that do not require 911.

I just looked at my tax receipt from the White House website. After my refund is taken into account, the amount taken from me was around $4,085. What things that I enjoy was the money used for?

Well, $3,100 was used to pay into a retirement fund I’ll never see or get to use. I don’t enjoy that at all. $725 was used for Medicare Hospital Insurance. I just went to the hospital a while ago. I am still paying that off because I don’t qualify for medicare. So, I paid a good chunk of cash to pay for someone else’s healthcare and can’t pay for my own. Definitely not for this at all yet.

I paid $68.00 for national defense. This includes a war I font want that has been fought less effectively than randomly killing people while hoping there is a bad guy there somewhere. Next in the list is Healthcare! Again! But this does not cover me either. $63.18.

Job and family Security plus Education and Job Training. I could use these services if I qualified. But, again, I don’t. $69.42 left my budget to pay for food for my family and into someone else’s pocket for their family. It’s a good thing I have a high interest credit card to help cover that missing one-weeks worth of groceries. It’s also the price of my dentist visit today.

I also paid $10.66 for garbage quality benefits for people who look down on me and demand I do things for free (Veterans Benefits). $5.46 for to be told I’m not allowed to used cheap light bulbs anymore, and have to now purchase $50 sets to avoid the flicker from the fluorescents (Natural Resources, Energy and Environment). There is $4.42 for pissing off other nations (International Affairs), $3.12 for a now non-existent space program.
Another $4.42 that went to kill a kids dad for drugs he didn’t use, throw hard workers out of the country, arrest Amish for drinking milk, kill people who self medicate and take political prisoners (Immigration, Law Enforcement and Administration of this joke called ‘Justice’). $2.08 funds agriculture and tells farmers what to grow. $1.30 for “Regional Development” and $1.04 for screwing up Katrina and setting fire to Texas, also known as “Response to Natural Disasters.” And finally, $6.24 to pay for the politicians limos, prostitutes, highways and the general throwing money down a drain.

Oh, wait, I forgot about the interest payments of $19.24, because the government is so nice about getting loans on my behalf and using it for junk I don’t want and then demanding I pay the interest.

So, what on earth do I use that I am paying for? Maybe the $6.24. And yet, when I complain about taxes, people tell me I shouldn’t because I am using the services. I’m not using any of these services! I can’t use most of these services, and I’d rather not use most of the others. What services in this list do you actually want to pay for?