Tag: Technology

Posted on

Questions that I probably shouldn’t ask…

In addition to dealing with my other half’s affairs. I’ve also been reviewing joint accounts and subscriptions that we both were using and that now, only I will be using.

One of those subscriptions is for Microsoft Office 365. We had a family membership that covered all of our respective devices and computers. That cost us $99 bucks a year. I’ve not been using Microsoft products as much as I used to. Apple’s Pages works just fine, allows export to Word format, and is faster than Word.

On a Mac you don’t have as much available with your office subscription and honestly the applications are bloated beyond belief. 2 Gigabytes for Word??? Really? That’s a lot of disk space, I’ve used full on desktop publishing software that occupied less space!

I don’t use any Microsoft applications except Excel and Word. I’ve been using those less and less because Apple Pages and Numbers do a fine job for my needs.

I don’t care for Outlook, and generally have no use for PowerPoint, or OneNote, Skype, or much of the remainder of the MS Office Suite.

I maintained the Office subscription for the other half. He needed to have more of the suite and hated having to remember to save documents in MS formats so that he could share them with colleagues. Now that he’s gone, I found myself reevaluating my relationship with Microsoft.

This reevaluation was spurred by my receipt of a Word Document. When I opened the document, Word started. This was typical and expected. Then Word demanded that I be connected to the internet so that it could validate my access to the program. I wasn’t connected to the internet at the time, (I’d gotten the document prior to leaving the house but hadn’t had time to open it.) I had no intention of signing onto the “Free” WiFi at the Starbucks for only one document. So I could open the document in view mode with Word, OR open it in Pages, do what I needed to do, and not be annoyed any further.

I chose Pages and did what I needed to do.

But this got me thinking…

When I got home, I opened Word. After a minute of validation and whatever else Word thought it needed to do, I was treated with a template screen. Oh for the days when Word just opened to a blank page without my having to choose a template. I seem to recall being able to choose a template after the fact. I could be wrong.

I opened the Microsoft web site so that I could look at my plan and when it was going to renew, The renewal is in July… I’d have changed it from the family plan to an individual plan right then except that Microsoft would have made the changes instantly and any other stuff that I needed to access via the family plan would have been lost instantly too.

Stuff like any documents in my other half’s one drive folder.

Oh No Microsoft… I paid you for a year and by golly you’re going to provide a full year of services!

I made a note in my calendar to make the changes to the account in July.

I went back to the blank document now displayed in Word. Hmm, autosave is off, that’s odd. When I try to turn it on, I’m directed to save the document to my OneDrive storage thereby uploading the document.

Why? Why does Microsoft insist that AutoSave be sent to online resources when I have a perfectly good hard drive in my local computer?

Pages doesn’t care. I can save stuff to my local drive or to iCloud.

Could it be that Microsoft is scanning all documents uploaded to their OneDrive resources for specific information?

Is it possible that Microsoft is colluding with various government(s) to locate and keep a watchful eye on people who may be writing things that government(s) might not like?

I know it sounds like conspiracy theory but if you think about it it’s a super simple way to monitor anyone that’s using Office 365. Lots of folks would say that having AutoSave and being able to access their documents from anywhere is worth it and they’d start pumping their stuff into OneDrive without thinking too much about the ramifications.

I was thinking about the recent TikTok hearings and wondered if our wonderful Congressional folks would even stop to consider that between OneDrive, Google Drive, Drop Box, iCloud, and any of the rest of “Cloud” storage facilities tons of Americans information is at risk. For that matter the EU should probably have a go at investigating just how secure all that cloud data really is.

Should any of us really trust these services to stay out of our data? And how do we know? All we have is these corporations promises.

I logged into OneDrive and deleted everything. Yes I know that MicroSoft has copies, and that all my stuff has been scanned and shared with China or the US government if indeed that is happening. But I don’t have to make it easy for them.

AutoSave will remain off in my version of Word and Excel. Come July, I’ll make a decision about continuing with Office 365 too. If I bail on Office 365 then my Outlook email address will be gone. I’m wondering if that would be such a bad thing, or would I find that I’m dealing with less SPAM on a daily basis.

Think about it folks, what information do you have in some cloud account and is that information sensitive? It may be that all this cloud storage stuff is worse than TicToc because it’s slid in quietly under our noses.

They say if you don’t think you’re going to like an answer, then you shouldn’t ask the question.

Inadvertently, I asked a couple of questions that I kinda wish I’d just ignored.

I will have to get a new computer in the near future, you can bet I’ll be thinking about security as I’m setting it up.

I wonder if there’s a way to just never connect the new machine to the internet…

Posted on

I really shouldn’t write when I’m angry!

Apologies for the post yesterday.

I was super pissed off on a number of levels. I’ve edited yesterday’s post for clarity. Even editing it I was still pissed off.

My frustration level is increased because I’ve discovered the most used key on a computer keyboard is the space bar.

I’ve discovered this due to my butterfly keyboard on my MacBook. You may have noticed random periods scattered throughout my posts. These have been increasing in frequency due to my space bar “Bouncing,” I’ll press it once, the computer sees twice and helpfully puts a period in for me. I’ve not yet found a way to turn off this “Helpful” feature, when /if I do I’ll probably turn it off forever!

This dubiously helpful feature has increased my frustration level when writing and decreased my desire to, and pleasure in, writing.

Don’t even get me started on filling out forms online. That’s the 7th level of hell with a properly working keyboard.

A new machine is in my future. I miss the good old days when an Apple machine would last for 6-7 years. This one is only 4 years old and apparently, I’ve don’e better with it’s inherently defective keyboard than most.

Posted on

Poor Jesse!

Let me explain. Jesse knows all the dirty words, long before he came to live with us he associated all of those dirty words with being punished.

I’ve been trying to control my language around him because even saying “Shit” can cause him to get nervous.

One of my pet peeves is technology arbitrarily claiming that configuration has changed when in fact I’ve made no changes to the configuration. Apple I’m looking at YOU!

Microsoft of course has been doing this kind of thing for years. That’s one reason that I don’t use Microsoft in my daily computing.

It looks like Apple is getting more like Microsoft every day. Eventually, they’ll equal or surpass Microsoft in annoyance factor and spawn a whole new computer or technology industry. One where user convenience, customer service, and reliability are the top concerns of the company.

Sadly that day is not today.

Microsoft and Apple are like two political candidates. You are faced with shitty choices so you choose the least shitty choice and hope it works for you

This rant started because I wanted to have lunch. When I have lunch, I usually watch an episode of Archer, or Rick & Morty. So, as I’ve done for the last year I grabbed the Apple TV Remote, pushed the button to wake up the Apple TV and waited for the monitor to clunk on.

Everything looked normal. I clicked on TV Shows and got a black screen. It was working last night. I was watching another TV show I’d purchased. I’d shut things down last night when I went to bed and again noticed nothing amiss.

I restarted the Apple TV. Still got a black screen when I asked for TV shows, but the Movies I’d purchased displayed properly.

Wondering if the problem was on the Apple side, I picked up my phone. I’ve used my phone to watch shows before. This time nothing worked. I was apparently logged into the right stuff but my phone said I had no purchases. And no subscriptions. That’s not correct, so I restarted my phone too.

Then my watch claims there’s something going on with passwords. This was my first and only clue about what might have been going on.

Needless to say my frustration level has been steadily rising during all this idiocy. All I wanted to do was watch a TV show while I ate lunch. I didn’t want to deal with some long drawn out technology troubleshooting situation.

As my frustration rose so did the level of swearing. All of which freaked Jesse out.

Once I finally figured out that the phone, and the AppleTV were effectively lying to me. Something was totally wrong with the credentials. Signing out  took forever. Much more swearing and a colorful vocabulary ensued.

The problem is that I haven’t touched logins or passwords for months. There’s no reason for these devices to believe there’s been a change, and none of the other devices in the house appear to have been affected. Although I should probably test all the HomePods just to be sure.

Jesse, disappeared. While waiting for all the logins to do their thing, I noticed he was gone.

He was hiding out in his room/cage.

I’d lost my temper. He thought I was mad at him. I wasn’t but he doesn’t understand the difference.

The poor puppy!

This is going to cost me plenty of cuddles and treats.

I honestly don’t know what is going on with Apple lately. But I’ve noticed that the software isn’t as elegant as it once was. I’m not at all thrilled with the System Settings on my Mac. Was there really an overwhelming need to change systems settings? Or was this all driven by someone who needed to keep their job and redesigned settings for no other reason? There are other aspects of the system(s) that are clunky and frankly confusing.

Posted on

Oh Boy! Some journalists are super pissed at Elon.

Apparently, Twitter suspended at least six journalists for Doxxing over the past day or two.

Twitter logo 2 1At first the journalists in question said they had no idea why their blue checked accounts had been suspended.

All I thought was, “Yeah, now you know what it feels like.”

It’s later come out that Twitter has updated its user policy forbidding real time Doxxing. This on the surface seems to be related to something Elon Mush hasn’t been happy about for a while. There is or was a site where you could track his private jet’s location in real time.

Elon Musk had at one time offered to buy the site and associated Twitter account from its creator but it’s unclear if they were able to reach an agreement on the price. At the time I thought that Musk’s offer was far too low. But that was just my opinion.

If Musk offered me cash for this site, I’d sell it to him for a reasonable offer. Hey I’m a capitalist! So sue me.

I think that the whole mess went to court but I’m not entirely sure, and don’t know the outcome.

Now the Musk owns Twitter, and has amended the user agreement. He is well within his right to control Doxxing of his information and that of other people.

This too is capitalism Comrade Journalists.

Ultimately I think the move is a good one. It has broader implications than just a handful of journalists being suspended.

For example, Twitter was instrumental in the disruption of Justice Kavenaugh’s meal at a Washington restaurant. Twitter was used during the BLM riots across the nation to coordinate wanton destruction and looting while avoiding the police. 

Musk is right, if a bit heavy handed. There is no reason to broadcast real time information about the location of anyone. Particularly, about people who may have controversial views or opinions, or public figures.

It’s one thing for an entertainer to tweet out information about a concert or event to their fans. It’s quite another to use Twitter to coordinate violence or a “Flash” protest of hundreds. We’ve seen the latter with speakers at various venues from college campuses to rented halls for speaking engagements.

Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, Dave Chappell, and Pamela Geller, have all been “mobbed” at speaking engagements, Pamela Geller had two armed gunmen roll up in Garland TX. They miscalculated. They were in TX and were “put down” like rabid dogs.

I just pulled these people off the top of my head. These people and others, were being paid for their appearance, or their appearance had been paid for by ticket sales to rent the venue. Their livelihoods were impacted by a mob using Twitter to coordinate a protest. The people who purchased tickets were placed in danger by the mob, and the venue lost money when the appearance or lecture was shut down. The loss was real and comes in the form of refunding ticket sales, damage done to the building or grounds, and salaries for security and staff.

Many of the Twitterati who showed up for the protests did so because they had nothing better to do that night. Most of them didn’t know about the speaking engagement or where it was being held. 

Having walked through a line of foul mouthed aggressive protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church with my Mother on the way to a performance of The Gay Men’s Chorus. I can tell you that it degraded our enjoyment of the evening. Neither I or my Mother gave two shits about the sexuality of the performers, we were there because this particular chorus was excellent that year. I didn’t appreciate one little bit that we had our evening out tarnished by a bunch of moronic assholes.

We won’t even discuss what one jackass called my Mother, or the tightness of her grip on my arm. You can call a man almost anything, but call his mother a slutty whore to her face in that man’s presence… In elder times that would get you beat to a pulp, shot, or run through.

Truthfully, had my Mom not been so terrified I’d have made that jackass eat his words and then eat the rest of his meals through a straw. He had the right to protest the performance, he didn’t have the right to speak like that to my mother. I’m old school that way.

This event occurred prior to Twitter and cellphones. The number of protestors was relatively small but they were vile nonetheless. 

The ubiquity of Twitter and cellphones has only amplified the reach of jackasses who believe that they have the right not only to free speech, but also the right to prevent someone from expressing an opinion counter to their own. I got news for them, that is not free speech. That is oppression. 

The irony is not lost on me. These people use numbers and mob rule in the guise of free speech to oppress anyone they disagree with. 

Free Speech is a tough thing. You’ve got to be capable of recognizing that people holding a different view have that right just as you do. You’ve got to be responsible with the right of free speech, and mature enough to draw a line between a protest and an out of control  mob.

I wonder if this is, at least in part, the philosophy that Musk is working from. Sure he’s trying to insure his safety and that of his family. I wonder how much of the overarching issue is Musk also committed to?

If he’s applying the new rules in an egalitarian way then I’m totally in.

If Twitter is suspending anyone and everyone who is providing real time information about public figures unilaterally then good. I’ll be interested to see how that works out. 

This has the potential to limit the incitement of violence and collateral damage or disruption to innocent bystanders just going about their business.

Do you or anyone you love want to be trapped in a restaurant by protesters just because Dave Chappell happens to want dinner at the same place?

You’d think that these journalists above all would understand the concept of free speech.

Posted on

Twitter is starting to look interesting again!

I’ll admit, Twitter can be a dumpster full of burning poop. It had become so rancid and flat out hateful that I left the platform.

In the early days, before the Woke mob was allowed to take over and began dictating what could be said and by whom, Twitter was actually a lot of fun.

FYRkiAyXwAEaitP

It could be a time suck, but not the the extent that FaceBook was. I never had a ton of followers. Followers wasn’t my intent, I had a small group of friends on the platform that knew each other in real life. We “played” on Twitter.

We found the challenge of making our point in 120 characters stimulating. Dirty Haikus, or Limericks were shared among us and we made each other laugh. We were sarcastic, irreverent, and sometimes very blunt. We were friends. Sometimes it takes a real friend to metaphorically, “knock you upside your head,” by calling you out on something stupid you’ve done or are about to do.

In the early days, all of that was permitted and since none of us had thousands of followers, the reach was limited. As the platform grew, more oblique connections were made. Suddenly, someone that you met at a party would feel that they had the right to tell you what a bastard you were based on their reading of an out of context Tweet they read. Then their followers would pile on without knowing anything about the situation at all.

What these people forgot was that the initial small cadre of actual real life friends communicated in person and a snarky comment might have been the result of something that one person actually witnessed the other one doing.

Admittedly most of my followers were guys, and most of their followers were also guys. Guys bust each other’s chops on a regular basis, and the closer they are, the more brutal the teasing, or yanking each other’s chains can be. The small cadre of friends I followed and who followed me were pretty tight, there was a lot of trash talking which was no different on Twitter than if we were face to face.

What we forgot was that Twitter’s algorithm was presenting our engagement with each other on the platform as something of interest to other people that we didn’t know and who we’d probably never meet, much less hang with. Those people could follow us and read our comments.

The difference was that If my friends and I busted each other’s chops in a bar, someone else in the bar might have taken offense, but they had the social context of the bar and our body language as cues that we liked or even loved each other and social decorum prevented a complete stranger from commenting on what was essentially a private conversation between friends. Granted that “private conversation” may have been us yelling at the top of our lungs over loud music.

Twitter effectively removed all of the social cues and context, leaving only the words. We knew what we meant, but to an outside observer what was said could look pretty bad.

It was at this point that the judgement of others began to have a really nasty effect on our goofy conversations. We could say stuff like, “I don’t know how you get a date micro dick.” Where the reply would be, “Your sister liked it well enough and BTW you’re going to be an uncle!”

That joking screwing around would generate a firestorm of comments about hurtful demeaning words, and judgmental comments about irresponsible sex.

Then it got worse. Suddenly, the respondent would be a misogynistic, evil, CIS, privileged, male. Sometimes there’d be a day or two of hate directed at both parties for demeaning women and accusations of intent to rape.

The incessant comments along these lines were coming from complete strangers and any of the other core group of friends who might have commented on the initial exchange were subject to the same vitriol.

FXjlC lXgAEfHYs

Almost inevitably some outraged SJW would report one or all of us to Twitter for offending them and we’d all be in a Twitter timeout. It progressively got worse. There was always someone searching for something… anything, they could be pissed off about. There’s nothing so dampening of free speech as complete strangers “Judging” every word or phrase. There were people on Twitter who felt it necessary to correct sentence structure and punctuation on Tweets where they were not invited to the conversation, didn’t know any of the participants, and didn’t understand the context.

Who does that? Those same people would take our ignoring them as some kind of victory. Or they’d say we were mean because we didn’t respond to their unsolicited advice. It became a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.

I personally got Twitter Jailed for asking one of these people, “Do we know you? If not butt out!” Apparently, the Twitter censors deemed that “Hate Speech”

So we got in the habit of censoring ourselves publicly and DMing our trash talk to each other. Then we thought, “If we’re having to DM anyway let’s just use text messages.” At that point, the fun group nature of our Twitter interactions died. Replacing it was group texts which made easing out of Twitter easier.

The thing we all miss is that Twitter provided other services. We’d see and share news articles we encountered on Twitter and comment to each other on them. It was great fun over breakfast to discuss the latest Twitter deuce Trump dropped over breakfast.

We do that now in group texts but it’s not quite the same. On Twitter, the news piece was linked in a way that we could view it on the platform and comment. Using group texts we have to pull the piece up on its originating platform and sometimes that doesn’t work quite right.

The group of friends considered and tried other platforms. But those platforms were being inundated with the same people who’d made Twitter simply useless. The same rules applied and everything said was subjected to scrutiny reserved usually for legal documents. We tried Parler and had a brief period of the kind of freedom we had initially with Twitter.

That is until Google, Apple, and Amazon decided that freedom of speech even non-political speech was a bad thing. When Parler was murdered by the big three, group text messaging was cemented as the goto communication method for my small group of buds.

Since Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, we’ve become curious. All of us are tech folks, and Twitter is very nice in allowing access to the stream of comments without having to create accounts. We’ve all been watching and reading tweets and have noticed that off color humor is returning. We’ve also noticed that things which could not have been said a mere 9 months ago are not only being said, but are also being promoted in the trends.

We’re asking if perhaps it’s time to create new Twitter accounts and go back to the fun we once enjoyed on the platform. My friends and I haven’t reached consensus yet. But we are sharing some of the funny memes that are reappearing and not being taken down instantly.

It would be fun to be able to share our camaraderie on a single platform without worry again.

The question is, do we want to have to deal with a bunch of assholes that want to be offended and literally search for anything to be pissed off about?

For the moment, we don’t. But the discussion is open.