Month: May 2022

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I’ll hand it to them, it’s clever…

When I upgraded my OS to Apple’s most recent offering I noticed there were some 3rd party applications that weren’t compatible.

I figured, “No Problem,” especially for the apps in question. Several of them had gone to a subscription model that was too expensive given that I used those apps so rarely. I terminated the subscriptions and then deleted the applications. To be fair, some of these applications were “free” and when I looked at the number of times I’d used them over the past 6. months I concluded that they just weren’t worth the space on my disk.

Typically on a Mac the user drags the application to the trash and that’s the end of it.

Not so with these apps.

In one case I found there was an uninstaller that had to be downloaded which supposedly cleaned the application from the computer. At least in theory…

In reality, it did remove the plugins to messaging and email, but notably there was a stand-alone updater that was still running every time the computer booted up. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem but this updater would then keep running about every 10 seconds and wouldn’t stop.

The problem was that there was no application to update and I suspect that confused the updater. It wasn’t error trapped in a way that would shut it down if it couldn’t determine what version was on the computer and what version was needed.

Just sloppy programming…

Then there were the MacPaw applications. Interesting thing about them was that even though I used their signature application, to delete all their applications. They still left traces and update utilities spattered all over my system.

It’s been a month and I’m still finding their crap in odd places. They too seem to be trying to update non-existing applications and they also appeared to get caught in an endless update loop.

For a signature application that bills itself as a way to make your Mac fast and efficient they sure screwed my system after checking with me several times asking if I really wanted to delete their product. Yes, MacPaw… I really, really, really, wanted to delete your product.

Dropbox is another one that left shit and at least 2 updaters running constantly. It’s also another one where I’m still finding settings, preferences, databases, and god knows what in weird places all over the system. The best one from them that I found was some leftover application that was supposed to ask if you wanted to subscribe to their service. I never saw the question, so I guess that since I used Dropbox so infrequently it hadn’t ever been triggered.

Open PGP did the same thing and this was even after using their deletion routine. They’re another subscription app, I used to use them a lot but fewer and fewer people use them now and even just signing an email always resulted in having to explain that, “No the email message isn’t damaged, no it’s not a hack, no it’s not a virus,” So it got to the point that I wasn’t encrypting anything and I stopped signing anything too. So why pay the subscription fee?

The really nasty thing about it is that all of these remnants would run, then fail, terminate, then run again.

The practical upshot is that they wouldn’t show up on the normal Apple monitoring application as “Heavy” power users. In the moments that they were running, they weren’t heavy power users. But cumulatively they reduced my battery life to about 2 hours from 6 or 7.

Thanks! I really appreciate that!

They were also running the CPU hard enough that my normally cool perfectly functional computer was running very warm.

Again Thanks, guys!

As I was combing through log files noting huge runs of file not found errors, and then backtracking those to the calling application stuffed in weird directories all over the computer it dawned on me.

“If I simply reloaded all these apps, the problem would go away.”

That’s when I began to wonder if this was bullshit by design.

If you think about it, it would be a very clever way to bring customers back and keep them. Most folks would look at the effect and assume that they had to keep the application because they couldn’t effectively remove it and it’s easier to sacrifice some disk space and perhaps pay for a subscription you never use than to have your computer only give you one third of its normal battery life.

Maybe I was being too kind, it’s not sloppy programming… It’s programming designed to trap a customer into paying protection. Just like the old mafia days in Chicago.

But it gets better…

If you didn’t want to dig through the million or so files and directories to manually delete the remnants.

You could flush the operating system format the disk, and restore your system…

NOPE!

Because all these crappy files and ghost utilities would just be restored and you’d have gone through the whole exercise for absolutely nothing except wasting your time.

The only way to remove all these wasteful applications without spending your day in Terminal typing commands, is to format the disk, reload the operating system and then reload all of the applications you want to keep, from their original sources.

Then you have to move all your documents, music, photos, etc from a known good backup.

Basically, it’s a compete rebuild of your system from scratch. Because in effect these application programmers have corrupted your backups too.

Super NOT COOL!

I will not even hazard a guess as to why Bit Defender (An anti virus program) keeps creating a Google Directory, With a Chrome subdirectory and some kind of json file in at least 2 places.Most people regard Google as evil, and Chrome as a security threat.

Although looking at the file, it may be that they’re using the json file as a delivery mechanism for virus updates. Nonetheless, I work really hard to not have Google stuff of any kind on my devices. I don’t appreciate an antivirus program loading anything through Google or creating Google shit on my system.

Then there’s Microsoft Office. I don’t use OneDrive, I don’t use the Microsoft suite. I use Word and Excel. I’ve deleted the Microsoft applications that I don’t use (PowerPoint, OutlookMail, OneNote etc). They’re bloated applications that take more than a Gigabyte each. I personally find that kind of code bloat obscene. Especially so, since I remember when Word fit on a 720K floppy disk in its entirety.

That being said, all over my Mac are bits and pieces of OneDrive, and the older version SKyDrive. Microsoft, you could at least clean up after yourselves when you update your application names.

The Microsoft subscription is another one that I’m strongly considering cancelling. Apple’s Pages does just as nice a job. It can even read and write Word Files. The same is true of Apple’s Numbers. Both are free and come with the dang operating system.

There are times more often than not when I just use a text editor not a word processor to flesh out blog posts or emails. The resulting output file is clean with no application specific formatting.

I guess that sounds like I’m “retro” but the KISS principal still applies. BBEdit or Sublime do a bang up job, even if I choose to embed formatting in a document.

Then there’s this little oddity. As I’ve been manually cutting the remnants of deleted applications out of my system. I’ve recovered almost 4 Gigabytes of storage. Really? 4 GB in useless bullshit that should have been purged when I removed the applications but wasn’t?

Thanks again programmers!

I’ve got a 1 Terabyte drive in my computer. I’m not hurting for space. But damn, just because storage densities have gone through the roof (remember when 20 megabytes was huge,) it doesn’t mean that programmers have a license to burn space for no good reason.

What ever happened to clean, compact, elegant code? Do programmers even know how to use CASE or reusable subroutines anymore?

Humans flew to the moon and back on 4K of RAM. The Shuttle only had 16K of RAM. I think they had near line storage made out of static column RAM, (not hard disks due to vibration) that was measured in Kilobytes as well. RAM was super expensive, and RAM that could take the radiation was… Astronomically expensive.

Honestly, I miss the my days working with programmers who would engage in competitive coding to see who could write the smallest program to do the job.

Ah well, those days are gone.

My immediate problem is to go back through the logs to see if I missed any other “Ghost” programs and delete them then see what effect I’ve had on my battery life.

There’s supposed to be an OS update soon. I may wait for that in case Apple screwed up and is running some processes too hard. If I’m still having problems I’ll probably go nuclear on my system and do a complete rebuild.

What I can say is that nothing from MacPaw, Open PGP, DropBox, and only select Microsoft programs will find a home on my machine.

I think I’ll also take a directory snapshot of the OS before I load anything. I’ll store that on my server and if this happens again, I’ll have a guide to assist in figuring out what can be deleted.

Maybe I’ll write a Python Script that will show me just the differences and paths between the original install and the point at which I’m trying to troubleshoot. Huh… I wonder if the recovery partition has a complete OS version. Maybe I could use that as a template…

Hi, this is Siri. The writer of this blog has just wandered off into the digital woodland. Thank you for reading. Good Night.

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Huh? I’d really like some fact checking!!!

Caught a headline on Apple News+ from ABC News saying that the Covid Death toll had reached 1 million.

The article was apparently building on a statement from Joe Biden lamenting this milestone.

According to the CDC…

CDC DATA :

Total U.S. DEATHS ( ALL CAUSES ) :

2014: 2,626,418

2015: 2,712,630 : Increase – 86,212 – 3.28%

2016 : 2,744,248 : Increase – 31,618 – 1.16%

2017 : 2,813,503 : Increase – 69,255 – 2.52%

2018 : 2,839,206 : Increase – 25,703 – 1%

2019: 2,855,000 : Increase – 15,794- 0.55%

2020: 2,913,144 : Increase – 58,144 – 2%

It’s not unusual for nearly 3 million people to die per year. That number would naturally increase as the population does.

2021 and 2022 data wasn’t available when I checked. There have been some reports that the CDC is re-evaluating their data due to over reporting of COVID deaths and potential skewing of the numbers because death with COVID is different from death due to COVID.

Even in 2020 during the height of the lockdowns and with no vaccine really available the average death rate from all causes seems within normal.

Indeed there is an anomaly, a lower than average increase in death rate in 2018 and 2019.

I’m not attempting to minimize the pain and anguish of a loved one’s death, I’ve been through it.

What I am saying is if we’ve had a million deaths due to COVID are these in addition to the normal death rate, or did COVID simply push some people over the edge that were already “one foot in the grave”?

My uncle “Died of COVID” according to the family and death certificate. But he was in his 70’s, had already had bypass surgery, still had heart problems, was an asthmatic, and was exhibiting the signs of what the family used to call normal end of life for the men in the family.

72 to 75 is about normal for us, we wear out and kick off. The best we can hope for is that we kick off having sex. It’s shitty for our wives or partners but we go out happy. Typically we’re not laying in a hospital bed in our own poop. From a quality of life, (or death,) standpoint, I’d prefer to just drop dead or have a mind blowing orgasm, go to sleep and not wake up.

Did my Uncle die of COVID? Or did COVID just put a banana peel next to the grave he already had one foot in?

Death sucks, but it’s part of life. We gotta move aside to make room for the next generation so they can screw things up as badly as we did.

I’ve always been morbidly fascinated with the way we Americans address death. We keep putting our fingers in the dike trying to hold back inevitability and honestly I’ve questioned if in doing so we are causing more pain and suffering than is necessary for the person dying, and the family of the soon to be deceased.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t strive for healthier or longer lives. I’m saying that at some point, we each need to draw a line in the sand and accept the inevitable with some semblance of grace.

When you look at the numbers from 2014 through 2020 it’s 3 million people a year more or less. We’re not wringing our hands over those folks as a nation. But for some reason 500,000 additional deaths per year due to COVID merits a Presidential speech?

Honestly, I find it somewhat offensive.

It’s almost like The President is using those deaths for his own gains. If the President is so upset about it, then let’s do the investigation to find out where COVID came from and figure out methods to mitigate a similar future tragedy. No matter where such an investigation may lead.

Assuming that the one million deaths were solely the responsibility of COVID as a single factor, (Dividing the 1 million across 2 years,) that increases the annual 3 million natural annual deaths by 0.16 which is about on par with the expected increase in death shown in the CDC’s data above.

Were it not for COVID, that increase might well have gone relatively unnoticed.

It’s still tragic, it’s still a marker for all the people who lost loved ones in a year. But people die…

Again, not minimizing the loss for the families, I just think we should have context against which to evaluate the headlines. Let’s look at the big picture, and let’s look at it in the cold light of truth.

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Great work if you can get it…

Recently the local pharmacy informed me that a routine maintenance medication Rx had expired and that I’d have to see my dr. to get it refilled.

Great! Another expense that I didn’t need. Aside from the gas and the time that I’d be sitting in the doctor’s office I was worried about the hassle of getting blood work and all the other annoyances.

I put it off.

It’s not like I’m afraid of doctors, I just hate the inconvenience! I do a lot of self monitoring and do it with higher quality devices. If something seems amiss for a while I’ll typically “Man up” and go subject myself to the hassle of seeing a dr.

Case in point, the ripped open thumb joint of last summer. That’s 6K I needed to spend like another hole in my head.

I’ve got a bit of a cold, I don’t feel like doing too much today so I thought, “I’ll be productive and make the doctor appointment before the day gets away from me.”

Grabbing the phone and dreading the hoops I thought I was going to have to jump through I made the call.

Much to my surprise, they had a Telehealth system. Huh, I was especially surprised when the cheerful girl on the phone said the doctor could see me in half an hour and that he was running on time.

What? I can be seen in half an hour? WTF? That’s one for the record books. Where is my 1 month wait? I’m used to having to sit in a waiting room full of sick, broken people. You mean that I’m not going to have to endure that?

The world has truly gone mad!!!

Sure enough, a link shows up. I click on the link and there’s my doctor. He says he’d like to see me in person for a physical with some bloodwork in hand, whenever that’s convenient. He reminds me that it’s been over 10 years since I had a colonoscopy and that I should probably get that done.

He asks how I’ve been and what my last BP reading was. I tell him this mornings reading. He’s like that’s fine. He asks if I’m running a fever due to the cold. I tell him yes but it’s only low grade. He’s says, “Good, keep an eye on it. Take care of yourself and I’ve renewed your Rx. Call me if you need me, I’m gonna go deal with some really sick people.”

I laugh, we sign off and that was that.

I guess there’s benefit to me doing the self monitoring and having the data on hand. There is also the probability that he knows I’m pretty diligent about keeping data and know my body.

The cost was the same as a regular appointment. So it doesn’t hurt his bottom line. The advantage for him is that he isn’t exposed to a bunch of sick people clogging up his office.

I did the math. He’s knocking down about 1 grand per hour doing Telehealth appointments.

Great gig if you can get it!

I can’t complain too much. I didn’t have to drive an hour to see him for a 10 minute appointment, nor did I have to deal with masks and all the attendant BS of walking into a medical complex. Here I am, unshowered, unshaved, in my sweatpants, and I was able to take care of business from my couch.

It was painless, and convenient.

Next time… I’m taking the call in the nude and scratching my balls. I gotta have some shock value when I see a doctor!

Based on a sample of one time. I’d say if the opportunity arises give the Telehealth option a whirl.

It’s kind of an interesting take on the original house call. Back when doctors where country doctors who often saw their patients into, and out of this world.