Category: Modern problems

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All I want is some quiet…

earthmovers

Between the month and a half of earth movers, dumptrucks, grinding and chirping and beep beep beep noises and the people next door constantly building, sawing, hammering, and whatever coupled with their little Chihuahua who barks every single time I or one of my usually quiet dogs step out onto the deck.

I’m well beyond a point where I want to move, I’m into the planning and wondering how to make a move.

stripmine

At this point I think living next to a gravel pit, or a strip mine might actually be quieter. Perhaps a home in the inner city ghetto of Chicago, LA or New York, the gunshots would be intermittent and I wouldn’t have to worry about neighborhood improvement projects involving heavy equipment. I’d just have to worry about the occasional renovation by riot and fire. Other than that It would probably be pretty quiet.

Okay, I exaggerate. 

chihuahua

I suppose I’m a little grumpy because today is one of those really NICE breezy days. It’s not so breezy that it’s destructive or kicking up a ton of dust but just nice enough that it’s not too cool, not too warm and we’ve got intermittent clouds making it a perfect day to be out on my rear deck, writing blogs, or stories or looking for a job, or just enjoying the breeze

Problem is, if i set foot outside the rear door Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap!

Then my dog decides he needs to have the last word because that little Yappy dog is barking at me, and he charges the fence line barking and the little Chihuahua who has to answer, stirs up the bigger dog in their house so that now we have three dogs barking at each other for no good reason.

Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap!  BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! 

uglyfence

My dog has accidentally destroyed the raspberries that I had planted along that side of the yard, and more than once has injured himself because of that nasty ill behaved little POS.

I don’t even try to go out on the deck now. In fact I don’t even LIKE going out there to tend the plants or anything else. I’m to the point that between the awful looking fence, and the nasty little dog, I don’t go out there if I can help it at all.

It’s just way too annoying.

goodpup

I’ve been taking my dogs ON LEASH out to the front yard just so I don’t have to hear the little bitch yapping.

I’ll admit I don’t like Chihuahuas in general. When I was a young boy, the old woman next door had two or three of the things and they made any attempt to play in my back yard absolutely miserable.

That’s part of why I stayed in my room and read books so much. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the outdoors, and it wasn’t that I was a nerd, it was that I couldn’t stand incessant barking and noise even as a child.

To this day, among the first lessons my dog is taught, is barking is not a good thing and when I tell them to shut up I mean it.

dreams for the dog next door

My old dog just can’t let it go he’s 13, and a grand old man for his breed. The Chihuahua is right there barking at him, at me, and sticking her nose through the fence to do it. I honestly can’t blame him for barking back. But the cycle is never ending and I end up yelling at him to be heard, and then he’s in trouble for nothing he’s done wrong.

Of course it’s not the Chihuahua’s fault either, it’s the OWNERS! If they exercised the least bit of control and assertiveness over the animal, things would be better. But that household is two women and they don’t correct the dog, they try talking to it. I swear at this point, it’s shock collar time!

I might be inclined to step out on the deck every 10 minutes just to hear the Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap!  YIPE!  

I love animals, I detest badly behaved animals.

I miss the quiet of the wind in the trees not having neighbors.

Guess I’m going to have to get a “GO AWAY! Home of Grumpy old man” doormat.

Oh I’ll have to make a recording that says “You kids get off my lawn,” too. I say recording because I’m a modern kind of guy, I won’t actually be out on the porch yelling, I’ll use a proximity sensor and MP3 player.

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“You get the Damnedest email!”

Tanya

That’s what the other half said looking over my shoulder as I was scanning my SPAM folders.

“This isn’t even half of it, you should see what the servers block,” I replied offhandedly.

In fact the servers do block a fair amount but the SPAMMERS continue to shift things around and there is always some email server in Europe with no security and is therefore open to become a conduit for SPAM.

Here’s a representative example.

I’m not on any dating sites.

The text says the girl is in Russia but the FROM is an address in Italy. The TO is going to someone in Canada.

I dig into the header and that’s where I find contact information that makes some sense. 

The actual REPLY TO address is a gmail freebie.

Other emails have been for “New Jobs”, and medications, and one young Russian woman was apparently looking for “Good Strong Cock” because her father’s didn’t satisfy her anymore.  I think there was a problem in the translation on that one, but then again it was European so God only knows what the custom is. I suppose I wouldn’t have questioned it if the email had originated in the Middle East or some other islamic country.

The other half asks, “Why do you even look at these trainwrecks?” 

Good Question.

Where I not looking for a job these would all be right in the trash bin. But if you’re applying for positions some of the legitimate responses to your applications come from the strangest places. It’s one of the problems having to be exposed on the internet and the new realities of the job market.

Rather than having 50 filters, one each for individual spam that comes in, and having that number continuously growing, I try to find the common elements between each of the messages and create a filter that takes ‘em all out in one shot.

nextstop

In this case I’m thinking I’m going to say anything coming from a server named alice.it is going to get the boot. It’s the server in common for both the Russian girls and bogus jobs.

I just hope it doesn’t stop my email from the Pope, or from wealthy friends in Naples who are sending their private jet to collect me to winter in their villa by the sea, from getting to me.

Oh well, I suppose it’s just a risk I’ll have to take.

Posted on

Can’t take it anymore…

IBM PC XT

I’ve been pointedly ignoring all the bullshit about Trump, the billion or so goofball Republican candidates, Megan Kelly (Who the hell is she?) And Hillary freakin Clinton.

I can’t remain silent anymore.

Hillary Clinton should be in Leavenworth, in a deep dark hole of a cell, shackled and awaiting trial. The FBI should have picked her happy ass up wherever the hell she was on the campaign trail the moment it was discovered that she had sent classified material over her private little server.

Hillarys Email Server

I’m not talking about material that has since been classified, or material that has been declassified, because there is no distinction. The business of the State department of the United States of America, should by default be considered Confidential if not Classified from the get-go. That’s why the United States has a whole bunch of Operational Security specialists, and requires employees and contractors to be re-certified in Operational Security every six months to a year, (Depending on the materials employees are handling,) just to keep it straight. And the rule of thumb is ASSUME a document is Classified and you’ll never go wrong. 

Classified

Which means this private email server should never have been allowed to exist. Innumerable agencies within the government who are charged with maintaining the security of the United States had to know about this server, its location, and its security status. They were told to “ignore it” because… why?

If I’d done what Hillary did… I’d be lucky to be sitting in Leavenworth. I think it’s more likely I’d have been sent someplace really nasty, provided the government didn’t put me on trial for treason then shoot me.

Leavenworth Penitentiary

I don’t think treason can be proven but the government tends to “over charge” in this kind of litigation because they want to make sure you don’t get off on a technicality.

One only has to look at the case of Aaron Swartz as example.  

Aaron Swartz

Swartz was simply making academic articles available via a P2P network from JSTOR and the issue had been settled between JSTOR and Swartz when the Federal Government stepped in.  Once involved, the Feds slapped Swartz with 13 criminal charges carrying a potential 35 years in prison and 1 million in fines. The case was pending when Swartz killed himself. By the way, most if not all, of the information Swartz distributed, was free, and still is today. I think the majority of Swartz’s crime was that he used the P2P distribution system to bypass JSTOR’s requirement for you to be a registered subscriber. I’m not clear on if he was costing JSTOR money.

So here we have a guy who’s maybe costing someone a little cash.

Hillary Clinton

Then we have Hillary who, for her own convenience hired a company that appears to have been unvetted by the US government, whose employees were apparently not subject to background security checks, to set up a server outside the control of the US government, handling Classified material and emails from one of the highest levels of the US government.

As the onion got peeled Hillary denied that classified emails were on the server. (Turns out there were classified emails on the server.) Hillary then said SHE decided what was important to turn over to the government, and deleted the rest of the information. Uhh that’s not how this works ma’am.  Now we’re finding out that the security of the server is in question. (Was there encryption? Who had physical access to the machine?)

Hillary Clinton

Hummm. IS IT JUST ME?

I thought rules and the law were supposed to apply equally to everyone. Yet here we have a clear example of someone who is not only above the law and social constructs, but they are still running a campaign to become President!

For God’s sake people, we’ve burned other politicians down for far less.

It’s well past time to force Hillary out of the Presidential Race.

This is not the kind of elitism we need in our government. We don’t need another liar in the White House. We don’t need yet another person in office who doesn’t understand and obey the rules.

I admit, I look forward to Hillary’s arrest for Contempt of Congress. That will be a day to be watching CSPAN.

 

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Kudos to Microsoft

Office 365

I’m now the proud owner of an Office 356 subscription.

Generally speaking I”m not real thrilled about the subscription software model. Adobe’s Creative Suite for example, is obscenely priced.

Most of the virus software packages are likewise obscenely priced on a year by year basis. There are exceptions, but in general the well known vendors are overpriced for what you get. Not to mention that their updates and scans are ridiculously slow.

So imagine my surprise when I found out that for $100 a year I can buy Office 356 from Microsoft and have a five seat package that includes iPads and iPhones too.  Add to that the value that for as long as the subscription is current, you get the latest and greatest version of the Office suite, plus an online version that works very well. 

Needless to say, I was skeptical. You know the old saying,  “If it’s too good to be true it probably is.”

But after reading the fine print, I dropped the hammer and now have burned 3 seats of the five seat license. Don’t get any ideas, I’ve got plans for those last 2 seats…

I’d been using the “Preview” version of Office on my Mac for a while and was very impressed. The final version of Office for the Mac is a pleasure to work with. I’ve been impressed that the Windows version and the Mac version work so much alike that it’s easy to forget which machine you’re working on. 

What am I saying here? 

WELL DONE MICROSOFT!

You’ve done a good job bring the two platforms together and the price is absolutely right.

Thank you!

If you’re reading this and have been sitting on the fence about a subscription to Office, just pony up the money.

You’ll be glad you did. 

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The Case against “The Internet of Things”

SatelliteDishstylized

I’m a technowhore. I admit it, even though as time goes on, I’m becoming more resistant to things like FaceBook, Twitter, and all that stuff.  

When It comes to machines being smart I think it’s cool. At least I did…

Then I started adding up all the devices in the house that are updating all the time. You really don’t think about it until you’re trying to track down how 15GB of data can disappear in one day. Then you start counting up the devices and checking their auto-update settings.

I started, figuring that it would only take a minute or two, then had the sobering realization that I have a LOT of devices that connect to the internet.

Two Physical computers, one virtual machine. (3 Computers)

Two iPads, Two iPhones, Two Apple TVs, the Xbox (Which sits turned off most of the time), The DirectTV box, The Television, Two DVD players, A Nest Thermostat, Two Network Drives, and a Printer.

45 Minutes later I finished checking all the settings.

All these devices have the ability to grab software updates from the internet and it isn’t until you fire each one up to turn off the auto-update feature that you realize just how much data our technology can consume while we’re not looking.

donkey

Any of the devices that are multifunction computational devices (Computers, iPhones, iPads) will update the myriad applications we all load, in addition to their own Operating Systems. All of this happens even if you’re not using the applications.

How many of us have “forgotten” applications which are updating regularly on our computers, phones, or tablets? With services that have no real data-cap you don’t think about it. But when you’re trying to figure out where, how, or if, your’e hemorrhaging data, suddenly you tune into the minutiae.

Even though I’ve turned all the auto-updates off, I’m still at a loss as to what’s going on because all the logs say no update was greater than 500MB in the past 60 days. The grand total of data that I can account for is a little over 3GB.

Hughes has claimed that their premium plan is having problems because of a server migration. Well, that migration has been going on now for 4 weeks. I’ve come to believe there’s nothing wrong other than their service sucks diseased donkey balls. 

Since we’re now spending more time in the “Crippled” mode with Hughes than we are in the “working” mode I’ve decided that I’m not going to bother fighting a losing battle anymore. I told the other half that we were not going to keep playing the plug / unplug,  reconfigure your network game that Hughes keeps wanting to play each and every time we’re trying to get an answer to if they’ve fixed their premium plan.

devices

I’m done, we’re downgrading Hughes to the absolute minimum and we’re just not going to stream anything. No video, no music and if I need to actually do something like real work or retrieving email I’ll head to a library, or Starbucks, or just use my phone hotspot. We’ll simply get used to and accept the crippled mode as “normal” much the way we accepted the shitty Verizon service as normal. (At least with Hughes we can actually control the amount we choose to spend on internet, unlike Verizon.) As soon as something else comes along that’s better we’ll drop Hughes like the steaming pile of elephant shit they are and move on with life.

This whole debacle points to another issue.

The more connected our devices become the more ISP’s will have an opportunity to screw us all. Unfortunately, that opportunity will be handed to them on a silver fucking platter by the FCC and the morons in Congress.

If these ISP’s manage to institute data caps, and then get away with crippling the service, or charging premium rates for each megabyte of data above some arbitrary limit, The Internet of things is going to become very expensive.

I think in the future I’ll be looking very carefully at what the machines I buy actually need. If the device can’t be started without an internet connection I’m going to pass on it. Eventually, I wont be able to avoid these devices but I’ll hold out as long as I can.

I’ve got an old flip cellphone around here somewhere… I wonder if I can get that puppy unlocked and go back to “StupidPhone”

flipphone

I know I can put the IMEI number in a website somewhere and …

SHIT! I still need the damn internet even to “Go Stupid”