Every time I start Emacs I have to bury to *GNU Emacs" buffer. This
is a little bit annoying having to do this. If I can't kill this
buffer, then I would at least prefer the default-directory of that
buffer to be "~/" so that I can easily load a file that I want to
edit. The following code is what I have written to accomplish that
task but sadly it doesn't appear to work.

(defun d-emacs-startup-hook
()
(if (get-buffer "*GNU
Emacs*")
(save-
excursion
(set-buffer "*GNU
Emacs*")
(setq default-directory
"~/")))

(defun d-emacs-startup-hook
()
(if (get-buffer "*GNU
Emacs*")
(kill-buffer "*GNU
Emacs*")))
)