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.

These emails always make me laugh…

I got one of those emails saying that the sender had infiltrated my devices and had complete access to all my data.

They further said that they’d looked at my browser history and seen that I’d been going to porn sites. Then they go for the blackmail pitch.

The sender said, “I’ve recorded your masturbatory habits and unless you send me 2K in bitcoin I’m going to send videos to everyone in your contact list.”

WHATEVER!

Go ahead! Do It! I put on a fine show, just ask my friends…

If there was actually a way to track this moron down, and they actually had video of me, I’d bill THEM. Obviously they’ve gotten their jollies from watching my sex shows!

Jackass!

I did love the comment near the end where the sender claims they’re honorable. Uh Huh, RIGHT!

I don’t go to porn sites, and haven’t for over 4 years. They’re too spammy and with very few exceptions boring. My own porn library is way better, and the image quality is excellent, especially on the big screen!

The only thing that is of interest, is that this email appears to have originated from my Outlook address. I thought Microsoft was supposed to prevent email spoofing.

Well, I’ve been thinking about deleting the Outlook email address anyway. Maybe today is the day. It shouldn’t take too long to change the email address of the businesses that I still use, to something else.

That would allow me to abandon the purveyors of some of the ridiculous SPAM I get, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about LinkedIn exposing all my contacts to data breaches either.

LinkedIn (A Microsoft Company) absolutely will not let me delete the connection to my Outlook contact list from their service. The Microsoft Outlook email account, (not the application,) continues to remind me of birthdays for contacts that have been deleted for literally years, and repeating calendar events that have been deleted for longer.

Several years ago, I very briefly experimented with switching to all Microsoft applications instead of Mac native apps. It was not a happy experience and within a month, I’d gone back to Mac native applications.

Yet, after manually deleting the contacts list, and the calendar data, somehow stuff keeps popping up even though according to the Microsoft web based portal there’s nothing stored. Hmm. Maybe my data isn’t actually mine???

Perhaps the only way to deal with it is to delete the account(s) entirely.

I’ve even been considering not renewing my yearly subscription to Microsoft Office.

More often than not, I use other word processing or spreadsheet software. I’ve saved 2 GB of disk storage by deleting the Outlook and PowerPoint applications from my system. I could save another 2 GB by dumping Word and Excel. Why on Earth does Microsoft Office need to suck up 4 GB of disk space?

I’ve already deleted Office completely from my iPad and guess what? I don’t miss it at all. I never missed a beat after it was gone.

Don’t fall for these kinds of scams. The only thing real in the email is the bitcoin wallet address.

Besides, even if someone recorded you rubbing one out in front of your computer. After Jeffery Toobin… It doesn’t matter in the least.

Who knows? Your antics might get you some interactive action not just the one handed kind.

The prevalence of these threatening emails might just breathe life back into the dirty magazine industry. After all if you’re getting your freak on with a magazine, you’ll never have to worry about being recorded.

Just a Thought.

Oh why can’t my life just be simple?

This week started out pretty good.

The neighbor whose house and cat I’ve been looking after is apparently getting better and may be coming home. His Niece and her Husband came down to clean up his house and make it suitable for someone using a walker.

It meant for me that I didn’t have to look after the cat and for at least a few days had the opportunity to look after my own affairs. That was a relief and my mood was pretty good.

For my assistance, and their using my dump access card, they agreed to save some space in one of their dump runs for various yard trimmings that I’d piled up around the yard. They’d rented a large pickup truck and my yard stuff would fit nicely on top of the other stuff they were tossing from the house.

I was out in my yard bagging the stuff to make it easier to load.

It was a lovely spring day and I was in a good mood. The sun felt great and for the first time in months I was warm and cheerful. Progress, warmth, and getting things done always makes me a happy camper.

Apparently the crazy lady in the neighborhood was enjoying herself wandering up and down the main street that all the residential streets intersect with. Aside from her occasional outbursts I was in my own little serene world.

This all went to shit.

I was almost finished with my chore when the crazy lady starts screaming the name of a dead woman who lived across the street from me. While she’s screaming the dead woman’s name she’s walking toward the gate of the house.

The house in question has been sold, purchased, and renovated entirely by the new owner. Seeing crazy heading toward the house, knowing that the former occupant was dead, and that crazy had previously kicked the door in, terrorizing the former occupant I was left with a choice.

I could watch the fun as she pounded on the door, or kicked it in, setting off the alarm system and summoning the police… Or I could say something.

In future, I’ll keep my mouth shut and enjoy the live police show.

On this occasion I simply said loud enough that she could hear me, “She’s dead. She’s been dead for over a year.”

This simple statement of fact resulted in crazy targeting me. As I’ve mentioned occasionally elsewhere in this blog, Crazy has a mouth on her that could make the entirety of several military forces blush at once. The fury of her insanity spewed forth in a rabid staccato of nonsense and obscenities and she started walking back down the street toward me. She was practically frothing at the mouth.

This sort of thing has happened before and she usually sputtered out then wanders off.

Wednesday, she didn’t sputter out.

She demanded to know who I thought I was telling her that the neighbor was dead. She further said I was a liar because she’d just spoken to the neighbor.

I replied, “As you wish,” and went back to my work. This enraged her further, she picks up her pace assuming what I suspect she felt was an appropriately intimidating and aggressive walk. Were she a 4 year old and not spewing foul obscenities every step of the way, it would have been funny.

I still didn’t take her as a threat, in part due to her size and in part due to the comical walk. That being said, I was monitoring her approach. She demanded I produce ID as she stomped onto my property. I asked her what good that would so since our ID has our post office address, not our actual physical address printed on it. ID tells her nothing.

This seemed to cause a momentary pause in her diatribe. Perhaps some logic process attempted to engage, and was promptly choked to death by the crazy raging in her brain. She then told me that she owned my house and that I needed to get off her property.

This annoyed me a lot. Her rage and aggression directed at me in close quarters was starting to really piss me off. Not to mention her yappy ill behaved Chihuahua that has on more than one occasion tried to bite me while I was doing yard work, by sneaking up on me from behind.

One of these days that little piece of shit is going to tangle with my weed whacker!

I said, “If this is your goddamned house show me the cancelled checks!” I know this was the wrong thing to say, I knew it the minute it left my lips.

Some part of me recognized that I was being drawn into her crazy and that wasn’t the way to go. That part of my brain gave me a disdainful “Tut tut tut” and called me a dumbass.

This internal dialog stopped me from peppering Crazy with a bunch of followup questions like, “What’s the mortgage payment? Who holds the mortgage? What was the sale amount of the house? Is there a second?” I think in my growing anger I was still considering the possibility that I could somehow win.

When she said, “The checks aren’t canceled,” I realized that you can’t win with reason against this kind of crazy.

At around this point she punched me…

I registered impact and minor damage on my right upper chest. Now I was facing a crisis.

Let me explain, and please remember all of the following happens in two or three heartbeats.

When someone hits me, I tend to instantly lose control. The world narrows to the person who hit me and I’m looking for openings and weaknesses. I start looking for ways to break bones, dislocate joints, and I’m not thinking about things like fair fight or Queensberry rules. I’m thinking about how to efficiently terminate the threat while looking around for potential weapons at hand.

In the past, this has resulted in epic rage and coming dangerously close to killing. In those instances it was only friends being present, dragging me bodily away that stopped me. Even so, whoever hit me from then on would literally crawl out a second floor bathroom window to avoid me.

That rage scares me more than anything else in my life. During the rage, I’m not there, when it’s over I have little to no memory of what I’ve done. At most, I’ll retain images or almost sexual gratification, but no clear timeline of events. It’s a monster that I keep chained in my head and never let out because I fear that the monster would overwhelm me then I’d lose myself in it.

This time I was completely alone, and that part of me that I fear most, was breaking free.

It also didn’t help that every bit of psychological, emotional, and most physical abuse perpetrated on me throughout my entire life has been inflicted by women.

Women who were bullies and knew they’d get away with it because when no one was looking they could. They knew they had the upper hand, if I responded, they’d immediately revert to the victim and poor defenseless girl roles.

Then as I was taking whatever punishment for raising my voice, or responding to their aggression they’d smile slyly through their fake tears, knowing that they’d won, because they’d baited me, or goaded me into exactly the situation they wanted. Far too often they’d do it just for fun, or a promotion, or just because they didn’t like that their obvious crocodile tears didn’t elicit sympathy from me.

Hey bitches, you say you’re equal. If a man cried you’d humiliate him about it, why should your tears get people falling all over themselves to make you stop? Fair is fair.

Here was yet another woman striking me, assuming that she’d get away with it.

Some of the chains holding the beast, snapped.

“After all it’s only the two of us standing in my driveway… Who would know?”

Crazy is a threat to my peace and quiet, a disturbance to the neighborhood, an ever present worry. She’s defective. A waste of DNA. She at one time may have been simply mentally ill but over the 20 years she’s lived in this neighborhood she’s gotten much worse and may now be using drugs other than those prescribed.

I do my level best to ignore her and shut her out of my consciousness. Going so far as to close my house up and run the A/C with the windows and doors locked even on beautiful breezy spring and summer days while she screams horrific obscenities at the top of her lungs .

Questions I rarely consider are, “Why are her rights more important that all the rest of the people in this neighborhood? Why does she have the ability to imprison us in our homes with her insanity?”

More of the Beasts chains snapped.

“Her neck is thin as a chicken’s… Who would know?”

My narrowing vision was increasingly tinted red. The Beast was awake, the rage was growing uncontrollable. Blood pumping warm adrenaline felt like life and youth returning to my old bones. Life around me slowed, I could see the fly hoping for a meal suspended in front of her face. Dust motes froze mid air reflecting the sunlight.

More chains snapped.

“That fly looks hungry, why not feed it and 1000 generations of it’s line… Free me, let me serve you, some of those branches would make excellent clubs… Who would know?”

The rational part of me had been busy processing that I’d just been hit with no provocation came back. That part of me just couldn’t understand why she’d hit me at all, it made no sense and was therefore an unresolvable question. The answer that came back was, “this bitch is crazy,” then the rational part screamed in my head, “you don’t have to be crazy too!”

The Beast snapped its jaws at the rational part of my brain but began retreating to sulk in his dark dungeon.

Tenuous control of my anger and rage began to reassert itself. Rationality rebooted fully.

If I responded to her attack she’d win. I’d go to jail, and she’d smile. I’d lose my freedom and complicate my life in endless ways. I live in California. Women always win here, they’re always right, even when they’re not. Women who commit brutal murders get much lighter sentences than men, those who commit assault are lightly punished if at all.

The police would have no choice but to take me away. At the time, I thought California had some stupid law in place that said I, the victim, had to retreat and let the criminal take whatever they wanted.

My internal dialog said, “Choose a better option.” The part of me that is the Beast, accepted this proposition but added if she hits me again all bets are off.

I looked Crazy in the eyes and quietly said, “I don’t want to do this today.”

I knew the rage still burned in my eyes. The very few people who’ve seen my like that, described it as seeing Death looking at them, out of my eyes.

By some miracle, Crazy decided to leave. Her expression was one of confusion. She walked away without looking back, swearing and calling me names. Two that stick out were “misogynistic bastard” and “fucking fag”.

It cracks me up that when a woman is jonesing for a fight with a man, if he refuses to fight her, the woman always calls him a fag. Jesus! The deck is stacked against men!

Her one last parting shot was this, “You’ve always looked down on me since I moved here.”

As I stood there feeling the sun on my skin. I though, “Yep, you’re right about that because you’re trash, and always have been.”

The rational part of my mind acknowledged the defusing of the situation without additional violence as a win.

But the masculine, male, proud part of me, and the Beast were both wounded. By not responding as she so richly deserved, the bitch still caused me injury. She emasculated me. Not in front of the neighborhood but in front of the one person that I can’t ignore.

Myself.

It’s not about wounded pride, that heals.

This is about my fundamental right to defend myself. Am I now too old to fight? Am I weak and feeble? Am I not a man anymore? Have I caved into the bullshit and now too afraid of legal shit or consequences to even defend myself?

I was a proud apex predator, what am I now? Old? Used up? Useless? Should I just wander into the forest and die?

Will I forever hide behind the police and the law, will I forever be a victim?

The police were called. They dutifully took statements. They advised me that I could have her arrested for assault but that she’d be out in 8 hours or less. They suggested a better legal approach was to file a restraining order against her.

Either way, I know she’ll retaliate. She’s a vindictive bitch. I know of at least two other assaults she’s committed against neighbors which were unreported because the victims feared her retaliation.

I know that I must file a restraining order. Not just for me, but because it puts Crazy on the radar of the legal system. Long term, that benefits all the neighborhood. Unfortunately it also puts me on the same radar. Worse though, this feels like I’m hiding under my mother’s skirt.

The rational part of me is trying to convince the Beast that using the legal system against Crazy is satisfying because it’s using her own tools against her.

The Beast isn’t buying it. The legal system is long and drawn out and requires lots of energy to be expended. The Beast is about instant gratification and the almost erotic joy of vanquishing an enemy definitively in the moment.

The Beast is pissed off, that yet again a woman fucked him over with self inflicted wounds.

One good thing came out of my conversation with the police. They told me that I absolutely had the right to defend myself on my own property. They suggested that I get a security camera with recording ability so that in the future, once the restraining order is issued I’ll have a record of whatever transpires.

The Beast is happy about that. “If she comes at me again… Who cares who will know?”

Another bright spot is that the visitors cleaning up the neighbors house were video taping the exchange from his property.

That will make the legal process a bit easier. But it will still take time and effort and trips to the court house on my part. All of which costs me money while Crazy incurs no expense, no punishment, no inconvenience, basically… she gets to win again.