Category: Technology

Posted on

Blog Posts Restored

I do this because of what’s happened with Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites in the past 72 hours.

I’m especially concerned about Parler being removed from the Google Play Store (Therefore the Android Platform) and the threat by Apple to remove Parler from their App store.

Both entities are accusing Parler of inciting violence. Honestly I haven’t seen such incitement but I’m particular about who I follow so it’s probable I missed these so called incitements.

That being said, Twitter and Facebook will allow calls for violence from BLM and ANTIFA. They freely allow Muslim extremists to post all manner of hate filled rhetoric. Both Twitter and Facebook are available on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.

Given that in the past 72 hours it appears that a full on assault on conservatives has been initiated by the Big Tech folks. I’ve decided that I will not be silenced and I refuse to be intimidated.

Hopefully, my Internet Hosting Provider (based in TX) are actually TEXANS, and will refuse to be badgered or intimidated.

However, I have a backup plan. If necessary, I can move this blog to my local server and secure a fixed IP address. It would mean that this blog would be harder to find, but I think I can solve that problem too.

When the WalkAway foundation is banned from facebook when the President and his family are banned from virtually all social media, and yet ANTIFA is using that same social media to coordinate rioting and looting in Portland something is fundamentally wrong.

It is incumbent on all of us who value our freedoms to stand up and be counted.

So here I stand!

I’ll continue to run my mouth.

I’ll try to lighten the posts with whimsy from time to time.

But make no mistake, politics are no longer off the table for me to blog about. What is happening right now to thousands of normal people across various social media platforms, is no different than the silencing of population segments in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, and Castro’s Cuba.

After silence, comes confiscation of property, starting with guns. After that comes relocation or re-education camps. Then comes the murders of anyone who dissents or questions.

Remember that as you listen to babbling Biden.

Posted on

Sometimes I ask Questions I’m not supposed to…

ADT security and I parted ways yesterday. Another divorce and another reduction in mothly expenses. They’ve been replaced by a Simplisafe system and thus far I’m far more impressed with the Simplisafe than I ever was with ADT.

The sensors are smaller, the control pad is smaller, the installation or removal of sensors is a snap, and doesn’t require arcane incantations like the ADT did. The price for monitoring is about 1/2 what ADT was charging.

There’s the rub.

When I called ADT to tell them, “You’re outta here,” suddenly they were interested in me. In the 10 years we’ve been ADT’s customer, we’ve had 4 service calls. 1 Installation, and 3 repair calls. The bill has been paid on time, and for many years they took the cash directly from the account and all was well.

Then I noticed the price going up. I didn’t think much of it. I figured inflation, and cost of doing business. Then the monthly price went up sharply and around the same time due to various human errors on our part we had a couple of false alarms. Both of which we canceled with the appropriate codes and countersigns. But the police still showed up 3 -4 hours later, after we’d been assured by ADT dispatch that they’d cancel the police call.

The police told us that ADT almost never contacted them to cancel a call and that they (the police) hated ADT for that and other reasons.

While speaking to the ADT Customer Service person I mentioned the rise in fees and falsehoods that ADT dispatch had engaged in. I also mentioned that the system was exactly as it was when it had been installed and that didn’t make sense to me.

You’d have thought that when the last technician was out here to replace the cellular communication module he’d have mentioned that there were newer improved systems that we could upgrade to. Those systems being more capable, efficient and lower cost to maintain and work with.

Suddenly, the Customer Service person said we could reduce your monthly fee to about 1/2 of what they’d been charging me. I told the person, “thank you.” but it’s too late. Then she got a bit miffed.

Whatever! Within an hour of that phone call I’d disabled the system, and removed all the sensors. Now, I’m patching the holes in the wall from the 10 x 8 control pad.

While I was scraping off all the leftover glue from the entry sensors, it occurred to me that if ADT could offer me 1/2 price reduction, that the price they were charging could always have been at the lower rate.

Then I remembered that Cox Cable had played the same game. They raised the rate per month gradually until I called them and told ’em I wanted to cancel service. Suddenly the price could be magically reduced by a substantial amount.

This indicates that these companies at least are charging much more for their services than they are actually worth.

Which leads me to the question:

Why not charge a fair price for your service in the first place?

I know that it’s a money making process to increase the rates yearly, regardless of actual need. I wonder if corporations would find it more profitable in the long run to just be honest.

If they’re going to raise rates, explain to their customers that costs have increased by X and that rates will be increased by Y to facilitate continued good service and provide for expansion to increase service levels. Most customers, myself included would understand that.

But customers like me tend to get very annoyed when we reach our breaking point, and during our cancellation call, suddenly find that, for who knows how many years, we’ve been ripped off.

The ADT Divorce is final. I save 1/2 on the monthly security bill with Simplisafe and have a smarter more adaptable system too.

I’m just working on simplifying my world and reducing the costs too. If you’ve had services in place for a long time. Maybe it’s time to call ’em up and see if they’re ripping you off.

I’ll grant you, you shouldn’t have to do it, but rattle their cages and see if discounts fall out.

Have a great day.

Posted on

Okay I like the look of the new MacOS

It’s almost intangible, meaning it’s tough to describe with words. But the overall effect is visually, the information on the screen “feels” lighter and more open.

Even on my 10 year old 20″ Samsung display the icons and text are crip and clear. On the Retina display of my laptop itself, things “pop” and the OS appears to be as fast as the previous version. Upgrades always worry me because there comes a time when the OS begins to exceed the hardware capability of the computer. In this case, it looks like the improvements haven’t created any noticeable lags or issues.

That may change as I get further under the covers of the system. I know there will be something I use regularly that will be odd or slow, but I haven’t stumbled upon it yet.

The unwritten law of computers is that the problem will not rear it’s ugly head until you’re in a time crunch.

For reference, I’m running on a late 2019 MacBook Pro 13″. While I am interested in the new M1 apple chip Macs, I’m probably going to stick with Intel for at least a couple more generations of the M series. I don’t have the cash necessary to go buying a new Mac every year. The current machine is a replacement for my 6 or 7 year old MacBook Air (It may be older than 7, I honestly don’t remember.)

For me, that’s the beauty of my Mac. They typically have long lives and provide me with great service over their life spans.

Hmm, I just noticed something very neat. it’s a detail, but a nice one.

My Mac changes the background screen image every hour. I’ve had that setting on, on Mac or Windows systems for years. The transparency and tint of the menu bar changes automatically to ensure best readability of the menu based on the background image.

Unlike Windows 10 where the menu bar at the bottom of the screen changes based on the theme (sometimes with unexpected results), this seems to be based on something other than an arbitrary color pallet selection.

I’m just getting to play with the OS this morning. We had a scheduled power interruption last night and by 10:45 PM I’d shut down all the electronics at their surge bars. It was probably un-necessary but I didn’t want to risk my rotating drives getting partial power then power loss, then partial power, then powering up again.

This morning it was like Christmas with me running round flipping on surge protectors and waiting with anticipation as everything came on. Then finally powering up the Mac to make sure all the drives were happy.

It was only after I’d powered the Mac up, that I remembered I had a new OS too.

The Mac startup “Chime” is back. I was like, “Oh, Hello!”

Neat thing was that all the stuff I needed to get done was normal and the OS wasn’t bugging me about all the new features. I finished what I needed to do and when I paused for a bit there was a nice polite notice asking me if I’d like to review the new stuff.

“Good Minion!” My computer is my minion and there’s nothing worse than a minion that gets in the way while you’re trying to accomplish something.

Apple Mail is completely redesigned. It’s going to take some time to get used to that. It’s not bad, just different and when I opened it, the change was a bit jarring. That’s not a criticism, just an observation that the look is very different. I think everything I’m used to is still there just moved around and I’ll have to take some time to find the new locations.

I’m off to find other new features and then to clean the house a bit.

We have a new arrival due later today. There was a young dog we heard about at a shelter. Went down to meet him yesterday and he’s moving in today. He’s probably not going to be feeling all that well when he gets here but over the next few days I’m sure he’ll be entertaining and entertained. Have no idea what his name is, I guess he’ll tell me in due time.

Posted on

Grrrr. Some People & Their Cell Phones!

Speakerphone cellWe’ve all seen them.

People wandering around having conversations on speaker phone assaulting everyone around them with both sides of the call. The person you can see screaming into the little device and the person you can’t see blaring their responses in a overly loud tinny little voice back. Then the offensive person gives you a dirty look and cranks the volume even higher when you raise your voice to place your coffee order. As if you’re the one being rude because you’re interfering with their conversation.

One of these days Alice… Pow! Zoom! Right to the Moon!

Or I’ll just slap the phone out of their hand and stomp it into the ground. Probably to applause from everyone else!

That’s annoying as hell in a public setting & oddly seems to be something that happens a lot on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic spectrum. Although my next door neighbor likes to sit on her patio having similar conversations. In her defense, I think she’s actually doing other things and is legitimately using the hands free speaker phone option because she’s got her hands full.

dnd iphone.pngBut there’s another class of folks that can be just as annoying.

They’re the people you sleep with every night, or the people that you may sleep with occasionally.

These folks don’t seem to understand that there’s a nifty little function called do not disturb on their phone. They also don’t seem to understand that some of us can’t sleep with their phones lighting up every 5 minutes. After all who can sleep with a disco ball flashing in their bedroom?

I’m one of those people that often has a hard time sleeping.

As long as it’s dark, and quiet I can stay asleep, but any state change in the local environment will wake me up. The refrigerator changing it’s normal rhythm is often enough to wake me. The power going off in the middle of the night will wake me because of the sudden silence. Even things like the A/C or heater switching on at more irregular intervals than “normal” will wake me.

So you can imagine what it’s like for me if there’s someone obsessively checking their phone for a message or reading new emails. It probably doesn’t help that I’ve got great night vision and can see well in nothing more than starlight.

It’s because of this that I am appreciative of DND and more so of the “Bedtime” settings on my phone. After about 10:30 my phone goes into DND automatically. By 11:00 my phone is in bedtime mode (so is my nifty watch). This means that no lights, whistles, or bells are flashing through the night. Unless you’re on a very short list of people, you’re not going to be able to reach me until morning, after all that’s why God made voice mail! Hell, my phone doesn’t come out of DND until after 7:30 am. I prefer to have my morning coffee in peace, thank you very much!

Sleep Schedule.pngI hit the DND button at dinner, before a Doctors appointment, during meetings, massages, or even drinks with friends (back when we actually had dinners or drinks with friends).

Now imagine me laying in bed asleep with a person next to me who refuses to activate these features.

The light from the phone penetrates my eyelids, and I’m awake. I open my eyes to see if there’s something going on. Nope, their phone is sitting on the nightstand but illuminating the walls & ceiling. Okay, I close my eyes again and go back to sleep.

This cycle is repeated 20 or 30 times (due to notifications, email, occasional text messages, etc.) each night. Add in almost incessant snoring, mumbling in their sleep, trips to the bathroom, and it shouldn’t be any wonder that I generally liked living alone in a tiny little apartment. Even though some of the neighbors were completely out of their damn minds and their personal issues sometimes robbed me of a decent night’s sleep.

As an aside, since moving back to my house I’ve lost about three hours of solid deep sleep a night. It’s not uncommon for me to be sleeping on the couch or floor in another room.

However there’s another factor in this that you may not have considered. Those times when the other person is actively checking their mail, messages, or notifications. They’ll be laying there reading things, and because the phone is like a damn searchlight in my face I’m awake and reading their phone too.

Then I get in trouble because I know stuff that I wasn’t supposed to know. I get accused of going through their private messages. I don’t… That would imply that I care. Nope, I’m just reading what’s on their display over their shoulder because they’ve woke me.

I guess there are those who might think I should politely not read the information but here’s the thing. You know that I’m going to wake up, if you really wanted privacy, you’d get up and go elsewhere to read rather than shining it in my face.

All this is to say; use the features on your phone!

On the iPhone just open the conveniently located control center and tap the little half moon. That will turn on “Do Not Disturb”. If you’re using a later version of iPhone that has the bedtime reminders, set it up. You can even schedule automatic DND between certain hours.  Another helpful thing that used to work, is that just putting your iPhone face down would silence it and even if it doesn’t completely silence it, at least the phone won’t be lighting up the whole room.

I can tell you, it will be appreciated by your other half or just your guest for the night…

Posted on

Another thing off the ‘Honey Do’ List

Fragmented diskThe new SSD drive is in the other half’s computer and apparently working correctly.

It’s updating the NAS backups now. The OS installation was a pain in the butt because nothing worked as expected but once again I’ve “won”.

The restoration of the data took 6 hours, (I let it cook overnight) thankfully it wasn’t a matter of piecing all the files on the drive back together.

As I’ve said before, your computer is personal and that’s okay. But having files spattered all over the drive with no coherent plan or filing system is difficult for another person to navigate or help you with. You’re welcome to toss stuff into your computer in any way that you like, but don’t come to me for help when you’ve lost a single Word document whose name you can’t remember, in a sea of 200 GBs of other documents that you should have deleted or archived a decade ago.

As an aside, I transferred the other half’s mess of a document folder to their home folder on the server. It’s very busy indexing all those files now and hopefully will provide a little help the next time I hear the dreaded, “My computer has lost a document I really need, can you find it for me?”

“Sure babe, I’ll get right on that. Fix me a tall drink, make me a steak, and then leave me alone.” 

After all a man deserves a last meal, right?

There are PDF files of music that look like important scores in a buckshot pattern in every conceivable location on that poor machine. I’m half tempted to go through it like Jesus went through the Temple.

I have a masochistic curiosity to find out if organizing the files into a more coherent directory structure would improve the operational speed of the system…

But I’m not that masochistic…

There is one bright spot. At least I can take control of their computer from my desktop and I don’t have to be seen swearing under my breath or shaking my head in frustration. That’s a mercy because I have no desire to fight about it while I’m cleaning up the mess.

It’s possible that the drive failing like it did, effectively rendering all their data inaccessible while we were waiting on the replacement drive may have provided an education.  Ever since I brought the new server online I’d been saying, “You should probably put your important docs in your personal directory on the server. That way if something happens you can still access those documents via your ipad.“

My advice wasn’t heeded, and so there was a week of uh, tension. It didn’t help that I said, “You know, there’s a reason I make these suggestions.” I can’t imagine why things were tense, Ahem…

I am going to run a duplicate search routine on their home folder. Just for the sake of freeing up space. I may regret it later but when I see 1000 plus files in a Downloads folder I have to question what the hell is going on.

I hope everyone has a good week.