O'bama O'bfuscates O'n O'fficial O'ccasions
but hey, what did you expect? He's a @#$%&*^ politician, after all.
Watch this video and tell me if you can spot the point where the devil's cash register goes ka-ching.
Yes, I voted for him. No, he won't get re-elected.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Avast! Stop, ye evil virus!
I like Avast for protecting the Pee Cee. Our town übergeek recommended it, and my experience so far bears it out. A couple of months ago I was visiting a friend who had a fairly decent machine, at least as far as the chip and disk were concerned, but he had two major problems. The first, insufficient RAM, was easy to fix. The second -- well, he had at least seven viruses (I really want to say viri), and that actually was easy to fix too. I downloaded Avast! and set it to work. It took a couple of days, several scans and restarts, but it seems to have gotten ALL the zombies out.
Avast! is free for personal use. This is not an ad. It is an unsolicited testimonial.
I like Avast for protecting the Pee Cee. Our town übergeek recommended it, and my experience so far bears it out. A couple of months ago I was visiting a friend who had a fairly decent machine, at least as far as the chip and disk were concerned, but he had two major problems. The first, insufficient RAM, was easy to fix. The second -- well, he had at least seven viruses (I really want to say viri), and that actually was easy to fix too. I downloaded Avast! and set it to work. It took a couple of days, several scans and restarts, but it seems to have gotten ALL the zombies out.
Avast! is free for personal use. This is not an ad. It is an unsolicited testimonial.
A tentative welcome to the new Cyberscrutinizer Howard Schmidt.
Let's see if he has what it takes to say what must be said.
Hint: it's about the elephant in the room.
Just today I was taken aback a little by this factoid: In November 2009 a mere 97 percent of all email was spam. If nobody else is going to let the cat out of the bag, I guess I'll have to.
While it's true that spammers are to blame for spam, that's not the only part of the problem. It is also true that Micro$oft is to blame for their crappy software. It's like swiss cheese, and always has been. Virus writers love it -- it's like playing dungeons and dragons, or super mario, or whatever.
Yesterday at work I figured out why our network was crapping out -- one of the PCs was infected and sending out a storm of I-don't-know-what whenever it was running and on the net. So far we've extracted eight viruses and a trojan*, and it's still raising hell whenever we let it onto the network. God knows what it's sending out, but after we unplug it there's still reverberations for a little while, probably error messages; when we run speed tests at about ten-second intervals it climbs from about half of normal speed to full speed in a couple of minutes.
*MacAfee has found these but it's not finding everything. Our IT guys had already started wondering whether they ought to try another brand of cleanser. Personally I'd recommend giving Avast a whirl. See separate post about this.
So. As we were saying. Mr. Schmidt has to do something he might find difficult if he is to get anywhere: come down hard and in plain language on the Micro$oft Problem. FWIW I'm writing on a Mac. And funny thing, the guy at the office whose PC is zombied has Macs at home too.
Let's see if he has what it takes to say what must be said.
Hint: it's about the elephant in the room.
Just today I was taken aback a little by this factoid: In November 2009 a mere 97 percent of all email was spam. If nobody else is going to let the cat out of the bag, I guess I'll have to.
While it's true that spammers are to blame for spam, that's not the only part of the problem. It is also true that Micro$oft is to blame for their crappy software. It's like swiss cheese, and always has been. Virus writers love it -- it's like playing dungeons and dragons, or super mario, or whatever.
Yesterday at work I figured out why our network was crapping out -- one of the PCs was infected and sending out a storm of I-don't-know-what whenever it was running and on the net. So far we've extracted eight viruses and a trojan*, and it's still raising hell whenever we let it onto the network. God knows what it's sending out, but after we unplug it there's still reverberations for a little while, probably error messages; when we run speed tests at about ten-second intervals it climbs from about half of normal speed to full speed in a couple of minutes.
*MacAfee has found these but it's not finding everything. Our IT guys had already started wondering whether they ought to try another brand of cleanser. Personally I'd recommend giving Avast a whirl. See separate post about this.
So. As we were saying. Mr. Schmidt has to do something he might find difficult if he is to get anywhere: come down hard and in plain language on the Micro$oft Problem. FWIW I'm writing on a Mac. And funny thing, the guy at the office whose PC is zombied has Macs at home too.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Legalize It
sez who? Well, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, for one. Or maybe I should say 'for many'. Check out their web site -- leap.cc. They have their heads on straight. I joined.
Why?
In case you flunked American History, or forgot, or whatever, there was this thing in the early part of the 20th Century called "Prohibition". It was an utter failure. It came about by way of a motivated, even fanatical, minority getting onto the ballot a measure for outlawing of alcohol, and an amused and apathetic majority not bothering to go out and vote because it was so absurd. Well, it passed. It became law. Serious law, written right into the Constitution. Of course that did nothing to reduce the demand, and a whole lot of American culture went crinimal. (I like that spelling for surreal subjects.)
And then ...
After a few violent years passed, the whole prohibition thing went into the trash where it belonged in the first place. We learned, or should have, that if you drive something underground, you turn over control of the situation to the undergrounders. And they're nasty.
So we have war ...
The Drug War. Are you as tired of this bullpucky as everyone else? Write your congressman and anyone else you think of and tell them to stop the war. There is only ONE way to do that. Take the money out of the picture. There is just one way to do THAT. Legalize. All drugs. You can regulate, tax, whatever, I don't care. Just take the criminal aspect out of the picture completely.
So who invented the drug problem?
The answer might surprise you, but it's quite clear: William Randolph Hearst. He was incredibly powerful and NOBODY would oppose him. There was no TV, and radio journalism didn't amount to much. It was all about newspapers. And any newspaper that opposed Hearst would find itself in an awkward situation: they wouldn't get any paper to print on.
When the measure for prohibiting a variety of drugs was presented to Congress, the major item in focus was cannabis, a.k.a. marijuana. There are worse drugs — alcohol, cocaine, opiates, tobacco — but the only one Hearst cared about was marijuana, and not because of anything at all to do with use as a drug. He was after hemp. He succeeded, and the votes in Congress were One Hundred Percent in favor of banishing the evil plant from the planet. It's such a menace, cripes — a single fiber can be three feet long. How could Hearst's massive timber holdings compete with that? Kill it!
In a column in Audubon Magazine in about 1999, Ted Williams wrote the best elucidation of the whole story I have seen yet. To find the story, google these three words: audubon williams hemp. Better yet, just click here: Incite
sez who? Well, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, for one. Or maybe I should say 'for many'. Check out their web site -- leap.cc. They have their heads on straight. I joined.
Why?
In case you flunked American History, or forgot, or whatever, there was this thing in the early part of the 20th Century called "Prohibition". It was an utter failure. It came about by way of a motivated, even fanatical, minority getting onto the ballot a measure for outlawing of alcohol, and an amused and apathetic majority not bothering to go out and vote because it was so absurd. Well, it passed. It became law. Serious law, written right into the Constitution. Of course that did nothing to reduce the demand, and a whole lot of American culture went crinimal. (I like that spelling for surreal subjects.)
And then ...
After a few violent years passed, the whole prohibition thing went into the trash where it belonged in the first place. We learned, or should have, that if you drive something underground, you turn over control of the situation to the undergrounders. And they're nasty.
So we have war ...
The Drug War. Are you as tired of this bullpucky as everyone else? Write your congressman and anyone else you think of and tell them to stop the war. There is only ONE way to do that. Take the money out of the picture. There is just one way to do THAT. Legalize. All drugs. You can regulate, tax, whatever, I don't care. Just take the criminal aspect out of the picture completely.
So who invented the drug problem?
The answer might surprise you, but it's quite clear: William Randolph Hearst. He was incredibly powerful and NOBODY would oppose him. There was no TV, and radio journalism didn't amount to much. It was all about newspapers. And any newspaper that opposed Hearst would find itself in an awkward situation: they wouldn't get any paper to print on.
When the measure for prohibiting a variety of drugs was presented to Congress, the major item in focus was cannabis, a.k.a. marijuana. There are worse drugs — alcohol, cocaine, opiates, tobacco — but the only one Hearst cared about was marijuana, and not because of anything at all to do with use as a drug. He was after hemp. He succeeded, and the votes in Congress were One Hundred Percent in favor of banishing the evil plant from the planet. It's such a menace, cripes — a single fiber can be three feet long. How could Hearst's massive timber holdings compete with that? Kill it!
In a column in Audubon Magazine in about 1999, Ted Williams wrote the best elucidation of the whole story I have seen yet. To find the story, google these three words: audubon williams hemp. Better yet, just click here: Incite
Onions
I'm cooking onions to put on the Bocaburgers. The laptop is on the dryer which rocks a bit. I'm sure I could adjust a foot to make it stop but not right now. Why is the dryer in the kitchen, I hear you ask? It's not. The stove is on the laundry porch. Long story.Actually what this is about is my new invention: wearing safety glasses while cutting onions. I kid you not, it cut down the tears at least 95 percent. Last time it was red and yellow onions, and what the hell has happened to red onions? They're not sweet any more, they're hugely hot. Anyway there was still 5 percent tears. This time with part yellow and part white, you might expect a little more but it was actually less.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Shop-Vac
The other day my wife was using the Shop-Vac and turned it off and then immediagtely back on. It fried the switch, so I'll be replacing that right away. I looked up parts on the Shop-Vac web site and found that the schmucks will not sell the switch. They will sell you a whole new "power head", motor and all, for about $70. Stupid. Very stupid.
The other day my wife was using the Shop-Vac and turned it off and then immediagtely back on. It fried the switch, so I'll be replacing that right away. I looked up parts on the Shop-Vac web site and found that the schmucks will not sell the switch. They will sell you a whole new "power head", motor and all, for about $70. Stupid. Very stupid.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
My Sudoku Method
I have a three-part marking system. It's all based on positional notation; any mark relevant to the presence or absence of a '1', for instance, is in the upper-left corner of the cell. Similarly, the other digits are in a grid, thusly:
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
If there are only two possible places for a '1', that corner will have a small circle.
If there are three, there will be a slash. If four or more, a dot.
If the numeral cannot be there, it's an x.
If there's nothing, I haven't gotten to that stage het.
I first scan for the obvious and fill those in. Then I go over the whole puzzle grid once for each numeral. Sometimes I just do the twosies (the little circles) first. Sometimes the twosies and threesies together. And sometimes I do the full monty, putting dots in the multifarious places.
The reason these marks evolved is that one can easily upgrade a dot to a slash, or a slash to a circle (a little messy but readable). And an X can always be placed over anything else.
Might write more later, maybe even with pictures.
I have a three-part marking system. It's all based on positional notation; any mark relevant to the presence or absence of a '1', for instance, is in the upper-left corner of the cell. Similarly, the other digits are in a grid, thusly:
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
If there are only two possible places for a '1', that corner will have a small circle.
If there are three, there will be a slash. If four or more, a dot.
If the numeral cannot be there, it's an x.
If there's nothing, I haven't gotten to that stage het.
I first scan for the obvious and fill those in. Then I go over the whole puzzle grid once for each numeral. Sometimes I just do the twosies (the little circles) first. Sometimes the twosies and threesies together. And sometimes I do the full monty, putting dots in the multifarious places.
The reason these marks evolved is that one can easily upgrade a dot to a slash, or a slash to a circle (a little messy but readable). And an X can always be placed over anything else.
Might write more later, maybe even with pictures.
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Those Damned Address Labels
I have vowed to not give money to any organization that sends me any more of those damned address labels. I have composed a form letter that I enclose with the return of their solicitation; it begins with "This is a sad day for all of us ... "
Yesterday I got some of thos Damned Labels from Amnesty International. You have to draw the line somewhere, sometime, and I drew it, and they crossed it. They get the letter. I hope they get the point. I encourage others to do the same thing.
I have vowed to not give money to any organization that sends me any more of those damned address labels. I have composed a form letter that I enclose with the return of their solicitation; it begins with "This is a sad day for all of us ... "
Yesterday I got some of thos Damned Labels from Amnesty International. You have to draw the line somewhere, sometime, and I drew it, and they crossed it. They get the letter. I hope they get the point. I encourage others to do the same thing.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Understanding China
Thou Shalt Not Understand China.
Unless maybe you wanna think in Chinese ... then you have a chance.
With my Keen Sense of the Obvious, I can tell that they don't think in English. No matter how good their English is, and while sometimes it's pretty good on paper, a lot of them think they are speaking Actual English while the Average Joe, plumber or otherwise, cannot understand more than one word out of maybe like ten. I shudder to think what I might do to their language, if I had time to study it. I almost signed up for a class a couple of weeks ago, but about a half an hour before it started I had to go to a fire. An act of God? I dunno.
Thou Shalt Not Understand China.
Unless maybe you wanna think in Chinese ... then you have a chance.
With my Keen Sense of the Obvious, I can tell that they don't think in English. No matter how good their English is, and while sometimes it's pretty good on paper, a lot of them think they are speaking Actual English while the Average Joe, plumber or otherwise, cannot understand more than one word out of maybe like ten. I shudder to think what I might do to their language, if I had time to study it. I almost signed up for a class a couple of weeks ago, but about a half an hour before it started I had to go to a fire. An act of God? I dunno.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Henry and Robert
... Henry Kissinger and Robert Mugabe ... they have something in common — they were both corporals in the army when their innate leadership abilities were recognized, and they were plucked out of the hoi polloi and groomed for bigger and badder things.
I consider both to be criminals.
But Henry is more of a high-class criminal. He was in a classroom when he was discovered. Robert, however, was engaged in looting.
... Henry Kissinger and Robert Mugabe ... they have something in common — they were both corporals in the army when their innate leadership abilities were recognized, and they were plucked out of the hoi polloi and groomed for bigger and badder things.
I consider both to be criminals.
But Henry is more of a high-class criminal. He was in a classroom when he was discovered. Robert, however, was engaged in looting.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
This is kind of a nice template that I selected but I had to tweak the text parameters because it started out with that modren eyestrain light gray text which I totally Hate.
I can't for the life of me figure out why this fad has come about -- gray text on a slightly different gray background. It sucks big time. Just say no!!!
I can't for the life of me figure out why this fad has come about -- gray text on a slightly different gray background. It sucks big time. Just say no!!!
That story about GPS —
thanks for reminding me.
Some friends were living in the middle of Santa Fe about a block from the Capitol, on a dinky, dead-end, block-long dirt road, and had some relatives coming to visit. The relatives said "don't give us directions, we'll use the GPS!" Ha! They ended up on a long lonely road out in the boonies at a locked gate bearing the inscription "YOUR GPS IS WRONG".
So there, Mister Garmin, Mister Armchair Navigator.
thanks for reminding me.
Some friends were living in the middle of Santa Fe about a block from the Capitol, on a dinky, dead-end, block-long dirt road, and had some relatives coming to visit. The relatives said "don't give us directions, we'll use the GPS!" Ha! They ended up on a long lonely road out in the boonies at a locked gate bearing the inscription "YOUR GPS IS WRONG".
So there, Mister Garmin, Mister Armchair Navigator.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
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