© Menno E Aartsen Monday May 29, 2023, and prior years. Disclaimer, Fair Use and Copyright statement at the bottom of the site home page. Most product links courtesy of Amazon Associates.
I am restarting my blog, I've decided, back as I am
from months overseas, but I have not decided exactly
how. As a start, I have moved all of my past blog to
the Archives, you can get there by clicking on
"Archive", above. Then, I won't post the most recent
blog entry at the top of this page, but at the bottom.
You can speed scroll there by clicking on the "today"
option above this entry.
Very
strange year. I had not expected to spend three months
abroad, but I love to travel, so no complaints there.
But: going far, far away for three months meant taking
three months' worth of refrigerated medication - I am
fine without it for a few weeks, always carry steroids
for an unexpected flareup, but three months is another
matter. And as I returned to Seattle it was warm, and
sunny, missed three months of grey weather and rain, I
guess, and as I write this the temps area soaring into
proper summery 'eighties...
Would it
confuse you if I tell you I got homesick for England
and London when I was in Thailand? Never mind what
that does to you, it confused me. It came at
me completely unexpectedly, but worse, within days I
was back in my English persona to the point that the
Brits in Thailand assumed I was another British expat.
At this point, I should say "let me explain", but I
really can't. Not convincingly, anyway, not without
appearing to be someone I am not.
I was talking about England. I liked England, as a
country to live in. London, especially. I left
because, at the time, it was very hard to set up a
business and expediently get venture capital,
especially when foreign, and my accountant in Coral
Gables, FL, said I should do "stuff like that" in the
United States. So I did, and he was right. Before I
knew it I had a position in a research lab, and was on
my way to making all of the lovely money I've since
lost. And my Italian car. And my French wife.
Sometimes wonder what would have happened if I'd hung
on to the wife and the Westchester white picket fence
and.... but I am too restless, alwe
ays looking for new challenges and more excitement.
On the computer front, I can say I have Windows 8
running fantastically smoothly, on both my 2009 Sony
Vaio desktop, and my 2012 Lenovo B570 laptop. The
latter is pretty much a "mobile desktop", actually, it
came to Thailand with me, but I really don't otherwise
carry it around at all any more, I carry my Blackberry
and the Blackberry Playbook tablet. There's just a lot
of stuff you can't do on a tablet, and I really wonder
whether all those folk who gravitate towards ever
large mobile phones have a need to do things you do on
a PC? It seems to me there is a desperate race on the
part of device manufacturers to create software that
will lock the user in to their device, when I can't
believe that a "Bring Your Own Device" policy will, in
the long term, lead to anything other than "Bring Your
Own Disaster", as I saw it mentioned on LinkedIn, the
other day. I don't necessarily want a larger screen -
if anything keeps me happy and connected, it is my
Blackberry Torch, and the fact it sits on my belt
without problems. A larger phone would have to live in
my backpack, or a jacket pocket, and that means more
risk of losing and dropping it than I have now. I'd
think that if you have a larger "handphone", the need
for a tablet is almost nonexistent - just the idea of
maintaining a phone, tablet and a PC seems silly. I
do, to some extent, but the central repository for my
data is my PC, backed up by some internet services,
and my webserver. I know from when I was still
actively involved with T-Mobile User Support that the
number of people who lose vital data using their
cellphone is astronomical. Yes, you can often back it
up to your carrier, but then you're stuck having to
get a smiliar model from that same carrier, when
something goes wrong, which is when things get
expen$ive.
So, the culprit was a failed radiator cap, the cooling
system could not build pressure, and boiled over. This
was probably compounded by my not changing the
serpentine belt in 2011, when my A/C compressor
failed. My mechanic told me the belt was fine, but
when I compared the old belt with the new belt I
bought last week, I found the old belt looked OK, but
had half an inch more diameter than a new belt. These
things are pretty amazing - no sign of any damage,
although it must have slipped, but I can tell the
engine runs better with the new belt, and my guess is
the old belt was slipping just a little, whenever some
or the other device kicked in. Anyway, thankfully, I
caught the problem before the engine really overheated
- from the look of things, no damage. In the interim,
troubleshooting and trying to prevent a trip to the
garage has made me do much of the necessary
maintenance, and in order to prevent any possibility
of overheating I'll install a set of auxiliary
radiator fans, and change the plugs. Those belts and
plugs are things to watch - in my case, they're
supposed to last a whopping 100,000 miles - that's
substantial, don't you think?
On a different note, let's talk about aging, and
exercising that all important organ, the brain. I am
writing this as I watch Justin and Bee Rowlatt try to
discover Germany, on my BBC iPlayer - Germany, a
country I know very well, understand, and in many ways
would probably be more at home in than - dare I say it
- here. "At home" being the operative terminology, and
to be honest, I didn't think of this at all until just
now, when I realized how familiar I am with the
Germans, who are culturally very close to "we Dutch".
If there is - I speak from experience - anything you
can do to exercise your mind, it would be immersion
into a different culture, even if that different
culture is only a couple of hundred miles from home.
Cultural differences between England and Germany are
huge, despite their proximity. Again, I speak from,
experience, the operative word being "immerse". 
In the era of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest,
and the rest of it all, it is pretty amazing that most
enterprises still use their tried-and-true advertising
strategies, even though, when previously consumers
would talk about an upcoming purchase with
friends-and-family, they now communicate with hundreds
of others to do their homework, including people they
don't even know. So telling your prospective
consumers, like Centurylink does, that their internet
still costs $19.95 in five years' time simply does not
work, since it does not and won't. Not advertising
your smartphone product because "the carrier does
that" is a lethal mistake - the carrier does not sell
phones, but service, and the carrier only has one
purpose - minimizing churn. Neither of those help the
phone manufacturer sell hardware, which is their
business.
I just can't get away from thinking that this is how
the whole Saddam Hussein debacle began - he used
chemical weapons on Kurdish civilians, he was reported
to have "weapons of mass destruction", and it went
from there. Why don't we ask the Russians and the
Arabs and the Turks to deal with this? What happened
to the "jury of your peers"? It is their part of the
world, we have nothing to do with the area and the
people, and we've got more important things to do than
police the Middle East. We still have massive numbers
of people who can't find any kind of work, and 20% of
American households can't afford internet. We have to
get this country back on track, and Ford cars with
touch screens and voice control is not going to do
that. I am serious, we're completely heading in the
wrong direction, as I mentioned in my last post
already. We're in a dysfunctional behavioural pattern
we can't get out of, one that is a mirror image of the
pattern that led to the last market
collapse-cum-recession. Having a president in his
second term, when he no longer wants to make major
change, is not a good thing. Yes, we've
achieved Dr. King's goal, there is a black guy in the
White House, that's very very good, let's move on,
more important stuff to do.
As I am boxing Progressive's Snapshot device and
returning it for being a noisy, useless and
dangerously distracting behaviour modification device
(rather than the passive data collection device "Flo"
wants you to think it is) I've been looking into
aftermarket GPS tracking for vehicles. There are some
devices on the market that are cheap, and don't
require subscriptions, so I decided to get one, to see
whether they work in cars. Insurers, you see, no
longer give discounts for alarm systems, unless they
have GPS tracking - think Ontrack and Lojack, and I
figured it should be possible to do that "on the
cheap". Many of these devices need to be installed
with separate antennas - I recall one from Radio Shack
that came with a remote keyfob I had on the Camaro,
that worked even in Manhattan - and I wanted to know
if the smaller standalone version works inside a
vehicle, hardwired into the battery. The picture to
the left shows the device, after moving it around half
a dozen times, when it originally would only get
proper signal when on top of the car, I now have it
working sitting on the dash - so far the only place it
gets a decent GPS signal, though the cellular (GSM)
component (you do need a SIM card) works wherever you
put it.
My next
project, by the way, is Paypal's "Here" device, the
credit card reader Paypal makes available to business
account holders for free. It needs an iPhone or an
Android phone, so after a long search I've finally
found a Samsung Galaxy model that has a sufficiently
advanced version of Android, and is affordable,
probably mostly because it is locked to a carrier,
which most phone buyers don't like. It is a
Pay-As-You-Go device, a moot point in my case as I
have a spare postpaid line that should work just fine.
This is a dual purpose project - it is high time I
learned Android, something that, as an established
UNIX developer, shouldn't be really hard for me,
because that is, after all, what Android is, a
UNIX/Linux derived operating system. Here is hoping I
don't get to eat my words....
I must say I am rather pleased with the work I have
done on my Dodge Durango. I only finished the
other day, eventually plucking up the courage to reset
both ECU's with the diagnostic software I bought.
Curiously, and I expect largely thanks to the Chinese,
most of this stuff is cheap to the point just about
anyone can afford it. The only thing I've not managed
is to delete the freeze frame the software found in an
ECU, I expected that would go away once I issued the
reset - "clear codes" - command, but it is still in
the memory. I assume it does not have any influence on
the way the engine runs, but it would have been nice
to be able to get rid of it, especially since the
software tells me it is "old" and irrelevant.
But for now, I am going to leave the thing run as is,
and see how it (just too large to call it a "she")
does, after the TLC I gave it. Next month, I should
have the power train serviced - not doing that myself
- and then in the spring, when I tentatively plan to
move South, way South, I'll do the air intake and the
shocks.
Recording four shows simultaneously while watching a
fifth? And when are you supposed to watch the other
four? You've got four hours queued for every hour you
watch, then. So if you normally watch, say, four hours
a day, already, today, you can now watch twenty hours
a day. Forget going to work. Or shopping. Or sex. I am
not even sure a standard cable feed can handle five HD
feeds at the same time. It makes me think of all of
the efforts put into car safety, and car manufacturers
now routinely putting internet into vehicles, operated
using a touch screen. I saw an interveiw with a Nissan
woman, the other day, where apparently the Nissan
approved argument was that this is perfectly safe, as
long as you don't use it. So we're back where we were
when I bought my first car with antilock brakes, which
was European, as there weren't American cars with
those: we're marketing products, like cable service
and motor cars, that have technological add-ons that
vary from useless to dangerous. And part of the
problem we'll face in the next economic downturn will
be that you can only buy those products, and that you
effectively pay for features that vary from unusable
to inadvisable. Yes, people text in cars. No, you do
not need to encourage that. And recording two programs
while watching a third gave you too much stuff to
watch already, so there can't have been anyone asking
for more. The kids have their own tablets and HD
phones and TVs, so they're not using the X1, or
whatever it is called. Cable or satellite in six
rooms? What for? A touchscreen with email in your car,
and other features that help you spend long hours in
the car, when we need to (and technologically can)
reduce the commute? "Voguey" Mayer has just put all of
the Yahoos back in their cars... why? If they don't
work at home they won't work in the office, Marissa..
and all the time I am seeing nothing we can export,
make money with, all we're doing is self-fertilizing,
well, a lot of it bleeds off to China. Think, people.
Eharmony is now advertising they are behind every
great relationship.
I haven't done half of what I set out to do. The
weather doesn't help - it's been much colder than it
is supposed to be, this time of year, which
discombobulates, as I like to work out outside. But
with the car finished, and nothing else seeming
terribly urgent, it is easy to sink into a modicum of
nothingness.
Nope, still no Thailand travelogue, I noticed the
gap in my blog when I moved my blog archives around,
the other day, if you've noticed the blog is rather
short that is because I've moved recent stuff into
the archives. The primary archive is now in the same
format as this blog page, with the dates going
forward, most recent at the bottom, rather than the
other way around. Why? it just seems more logical to
me, always has done, but I always compromized. I
don't know how much of a difference it makes, I
don't maintain an index, used to when I still used
Wordpress, but abandoned that after I got hacked at
domain level - Wordpress isn't that "secure",
nothing using /cgi/bin really is. The picture to the
left is really nothing to do with anything, friends
took me to a Japanese buffet restaurant in Seattle,
and by the time I got back to the table and had the
waitress snap a picture of us, I realized my plate
looked kinda pretty, the way only sculpted Japanese
food can, and this is the result. FWIW..
Increasingly, places like Google and Facebook are
getting more corporate and profit oriented, and
while that is understandable, they're losing their
missions. This morning, a friend sent me a News
Feed link in Facebook, which then insisted that I
sent the linke to me.. and over the past few
weeks, Facebook has reset all my "Friends"
settings to "Most Updates" from "Only Important" -
not once, but two or three times. It does this in
conjuction with reducing my News Feed so I only
get to see a couple of days of Friends' news,
followed by an invitation to add more friends.
Google
is next on my list - you cannot now post video on
Youtube without a copyright dispute if you shot
something and somebody had a car radio going
within earshot. This is completely amazing, since
if you record something that has copyrighted
material, like the voice of a GPS unit, that
Youtube does not recognize, there isn't a
copyright claim. So Youtube now arbitrarily
censures your material. There certainly is a
copyright issue if you put a sound track on your
video, but if you are taping in your house where
Channel 13 broadcasts President Obama - that would
be a Fox copyright - where the TV just happened to
be on, but not the subject, Youtube does not flag
that. That's crazy - either you flag everything
that's copyrighted, including the pictures on the
wall and the T-short your wife is wearing, or you
only flag abuse of copyright.
It
has taken me quite a while, but I finally
managed to shoot a decent picture of my Samsung
Galaxy Exhibit 4G, mounted in my car monitoring
the ECU via the OBD connector, as well as
performance, using both the phone's GPS and the
engine information. The folks at Caroo have
really done a very nice app for those who like
to monitor this type of information. They're
responsive too - their latest version loses
Bluetooth connectivity, and they came back with
a logging version for troubleshooting within the
day.
While I am not surprised the Chinese government
is providing little support in the disaster
going on next door, in the Philippines, I am
always confused how such a large country with
endless resources, as well as some of the true
wisdom of the ages, behaves in such an
"estranged" manner. It is as if husband China,
in rapprochement to the rest of the world for
decades, is being controlled by a nagging wife
at home (forgive the analogy, I am sure a female
writer would reverse that) who doesn't like the
neighbours, won't cook foreign food, and hits
the cooking wine when hubby's not home. We hear
about Chinese learning English - the reverse is
true, there isn't a concerted effort in China to
teach the kids English - and English is the
Lingua Franca of the business and scientific and
engineering world, as we Dutch, traders by
birth, discovered many hundreds of years ago.
The Chinese have this "tri-chotomy", between
their ancient culture, their political leanings,
and the outside world, and I don't think they
have the balance right. Perhaps understandable
in a country that's been invaded so many times,
and has had to battle its way to progress, but
alienating your neighbours, when you're the size
of Mother China, seems a positively silly thing
to do. 
Insurance
dongles are slowly a big issue - you
can't even get Metromile insurance without
one, and I am pretty sure other insurers will
soon require new customers to use one. A
diagnostic port - I use mine for an OBD II
reader which tells an Android app how my car
is doing, where the data is combined with
video - is just that, a diagnostic port. If it
were meant for insurance use, drawing power
24/7, because it communicates 24/7 via a
wireless phone network with the insurance
company, it would be called "insurance port".
That would be separate from the diagnostic
port, which is intended for owners and
mechanics and emissions testing. If insurances
want a port for this type of use, they need to
build a dongle that has batteries, that gets
turned off when the vehicle is off, and
insurance companies should discuss that with
automobile manufacturers, and probably the
government. There are cars whose battery
drains quickly - these dongles must be in and
are powered permanently - because the car
manufacturer has connections in the port the
insurer does not know about, and then it is
actually the vehicle computer that tells the
insurer about hard acceleration and braking,
that means that even a timely emergency stop
that saved a life because some motorcyle moron
ahead of you lost control of their bike is
flagged to your insurer as "bad". I've
actually had that happen, I've had my boss
come off his motorbike after hitting another
car, right in front of my car. As you
can see in the pic, there is data coming out
of the ECU that really is not intended for
insurance companies, and fully ready for their
mi$interpretation...
So if you want to drive in Canada with
American auto insurance you need a Canadian
insurance ID, something I did not know when
I thought I'd run up to Vancouver to get
some Bitcoin at the world's first Bitcoin
ATM there. It isn't a huge issue, one call
to the insurance and they put one in the
mail, but still, you've gotta know. Glad I
called.
Be
that as it may, I've now gotten all I wanted
out of the one device, at the cost of one
T-Mobile line, one cheapish (US$125) Android
device, and a US$4.50 piece of software. As
it turns out, Google lets me locate the
device, now permanently in the vehicle, via
the Android Device Manager website, and so I
have all I wanted in one fell swoop. It is
currently testing to see if it doesn't croak
in freezing temperatures, only one way to
figure that out, but so far, so good. Every
time we see a Russian dashcam shot I hear
the anchors say that "all Russians seem to
have that" - well, we can do too. So if
you're a driver, you really need to start
thinking that anybody around you can be
filming traffic - yesterday, I drove behind
a Dodge Caravan that consistently did not
use indicators when turning - all it needs
is that video on Youtube, or in an email to
the cops, and you are toast. At this point,
I am finding out whether or not the device
survives the somewhat hard freeze we're
having in the Seattle area - while not
Alaskan, it is unusually cold for the
region, it's been down to 24° Fahrenheit. So
far so good, I am actually amazed at how
well the battery holds up in this weather. 
I have much more data than will fit on
even a terabyte drive, so every time I buy
a new system, or fit an existing system
with a larger drive, I have to figure out
what goes where in terms of backing up -
or perhaps more to the point, in term of
finding old data on my growing pile of
backup devices. That's just become more of
a headache than it already was - I bought
a terabyte drive as an upgrade for
my laptop, and I only have one backup disk
that is larger, 2 terabytes, the others
are all smaller, though not by much.
Anyway,
I digress. It is better to simply clone my
hard disk, this after backing it up, but
that isn't as easy as it sounds. I can't
create a Windows 8.1 image, even though I
found instructions to do that, an error
comes back from Windows Powershell that
tells me I don't have enough disk space
(copying a 500GB drive to a 500GB drive
shouldn't be an issue). So, I will now do
a full AIS backup to that drive instead,
and see if I can image the 500GB internal
to an external 750GB. There are lots of
variables - WBAdmin speaks of USB drives,
I back up to a blindingly fast ESATA
drive, could that be related? So we'll see
- I do have Seagate cloning software, but
that means a two step process, clone to
the Seagate drive, then clone from the
Seagate drive, the Seagate software, from
trusted Acronis, won't work at all unless
it sees a Seagate drive. And you can't
sort of "slightly get it right" - you
screw it up, that's it, you lost your
data. So, another 18 hour backup is
runnin, and next steps will be when that
finishes. Gone are the days of "quick and
dirty"...
So, this
is how it goes. First, a full AIS backup
of C:, onto the Tivo drive. Then, a full
image of C:, onto the images drive.
Then, clone C: onto the free Seagate.
Then, swap the C: drive out for the new
Travelstar. Put C: to the side, in case
I have to put it back. Now, boot from
the Seagate, and clone that to the now
internal Travelstar. Power down,
disconnect Seagate, and boot from the
new Travelstar. Expand, if the Seagate
software has not donethat, the
Travelstar's C: partition to take up the
entire drive.
I am gobsmacked. General
Motors, which in the end cost
the American taxpayer some $10.5 billion
to rescue, is now going to be run by
an executive who has only ever had the
one job with the one company, who
helped GM lose all that money, has no
industry experience of any kind, has
never had a job interview (rolled in
as an intern), has no competitive
experience, and this is how we'll make
America better? Is this a trend? The
mind seriously boggles. We must have
better people than that to help our
industry compete in the marketplace.
You probably think
I've gone bonkers, making such a big
deal of replacing a hard disk,
but there is some method to my
madness. You see, every few years I
need to move my archives, just to make
sure I can. Only yesterday, a friend
mentioned he'd lost a decade or more
of data because his fault tolerant box
died, and he did not have that backed
up. That has, knock on wood, never
happened to me, I don't reply on any
one piece of hardware to store my
archives. He now stores "in the
Cloud", but you see, I am one of the
people who designed and built the
first instances of what would become
the Cloud, and one thing that's done
for me is to help me understand how
easy it is to lose an entire storage
network setup. One one occasion, I've
had (in the lab) an entire redundant
disk array go south, because of one
single wrong byte of data that
traversed the network cards at exactly
the same moment. Blooie.
If you need
tires for your Dodge Dakota or
Durango, I can now wholeheartedly
recommend Pepboys' Definity product.
I had them fitted in the summer,
they have their own brand oversize
All Terrain tire with M+S marking
for my Durango, manufactured by
Cooper, and after a lot of searching
it turned out this was the best
deal, (at the time) four for the
price of three inclusive of
installation, balancing, four wheel
alignment, and a puncture warranty,
$776.12, or just under $200 per
installed tire, but they should
last. The tires turn out to run very
smoothly, but they have decreased my
gas mileage slightly, this probably
due to the combination of their
oversize (a Dodge approved
265/70R16, 3% larger diameter than
stock) and heavy duty tread, but boy
do they grip. They are here.
For folks in my age group antilock
braking, which requires you to stomp
on the brakes, and keep your foot
down, when on a slippery road, is
kind of counter-intuitive, we grew
up pumping the brakes. So at the
beginning of every winter, once
there is snow and ice on the road, I
find a quiet road or parking lot,
and remind my brain how to brake in
the slush, hard. Well, not with
these tires - I did it today, roads
in my neighbourhood covered with a
mixture of slush and snow, but the
antilock mechanism never activated.
It's the tires' fault - their tread
is so solid, the wheels never
locked, the car just stopped dead. I
drove around the block, found a
different road, but after four tries
just gave up. Teehee.
After I wrote my
previous pieces around backing up, I
got some responses that using RAID
technology would be a good way
to ensure data security, and that,
of course, took me right back to my
own lab days, and my experiments
with RAID techologies. You can do
this at home, if you like - a
Windows PC with Vista or newer, and
fitted with a couple of disk
interfaces (not USB, that isn't RAID
supported by Microsoft), will
happily let you set up two similar
disks in a variety of RAID
configurations. Remember, then, that
RAID is an emulator - it pretends to
the computer it is an ordinary hard
disk, but it is not, and that can
cause problems. If nothing else,
when you have a failed hard disk you
can try and recover the data - when
necessary, you can send it in to one
of the places that specialize in
data recovery. With a failed RAID
array, there may not be anything to
recover - and before you tell me,
I've spent time testing this.
Anyway, my
simple issue is that if you rely on
your laptop for "essential life
functions", I found you can most
easily recover (and I actually did
this) by reinstalling Windows on
your hard disk, then restoring the
backed up "C:" partition. That
works, lots of other solutions do
not - some stuff that works under
Windows 7 and Windows 8 does not
even work under Windows 8.1. Most
importantly, the "free" Cloud
storage you get from all and sundry
is not enough to store your files
over the years. You need a computer
with a disk large enough to store
everything you need this month, and
a backup drive that is the same
size, with a mirror of what you have
on the PC.
The "Connected
Home"? It appears to be little
understood that if the fridge can
order its own groceries, due to,
umm, amazing technologies, we'd have
to invent, and pay for, an entire
ecosystem that would enable the
groceries to be collected,
transported, and delivered to said
refrigerator - you really want the
UPS guy in your kitchen? Here in the
United States, Federal Express and
UPS ran out of capacity delivering
shipments, for the first time ever,
this holiday season. I would
seriously suggest that before we do
an "internet of things", we start
thinking about the consequences and
the implementation cost of new
technologies - which, in my book,
aren't all that new. The picture
here is of a smart GSM wristwatch I
bought in China in 2009, complete
with everything you have in your
smartphone today, including touch
screen. They've been around for
years, nice toys, otherwise useless.
I recall our spending millions of
dollars implementing speech
recognition technologies into the
telephone network, back in the '90s,
only to find that the consumer was
not going to pay for this magic,
which became a marketing commodity
leading to a smartphone technology
nobody actually uses.. I may be
desperately wrong, but I believe
smart glasses and smart wristwatches
are desperate attempts to find new
markets for old technologies.
Honestly, I ditched my glasses in
1975, we've had Lasik for many
years, why would anybody retrograde
into spectacles?
If
you are using Google's Android
device manager to locate your
wireless device, do not count on it
actually knowing where it is. The
picture here shows you how Google
located my car in a Costco gas
station - more than 24 hours
after it left there. And that
didn't happen just once, it happens
on a regular basis, over a period of
several months. I am testing what
all you can do with an Android
wireless device, in terms of
actually useful stuff, rather than
it counting calories (only your body
can do that, and you can probably do
a better job with a calculator than
an app can do with whatever the
programmer did or did not know, when
they wrote the code). I'll keep you
posted, but if you have any kind of
app that relies on Google reading
your phone's network and GPS data to
establish distance or locality, it
is not (emphatically, and
that is what I wanted to know) a
reliable tool.
Those intrepid
Chinese export lots of foods,
especially fish, in bulk, and
recently I've noticed bags of mixed
frozen seafood, with crab,
mussels, shrimp, clams, a mix of
shellfish, quite reasonably priced,
around $6 per bag or so. You defrost
the bag in the fridge, and then you
can do whatever, here is an example
of a simple mix of seafood and veg.
Season to taste, it is quickly
cooked and should be healthier than
burgers 'n stuff. As you look at
what the Chinese make and export,
you can tell their response to the
global recession is one of
innovation - until they came up with
this I'd never seen mixed seafood
like this, they tried it out last
year, now there is a freezer section
for it. The crab? Not surimi, but
the Real Thing. That should send
some seafood lovers running for
Safeway, where I noticed it.
Whether I
contracted a virus, Microsoft
distributed a contaminated update
file, I made the same mistake myself
on both my Vaio and my Lenovo, I'll
probably never know. I had to
completely reinstall both of my
systems, not in itself a huge deal
as I like maintaining that skillset,
and have a very complete backup
system. The reinstall even managed
to fix some problems I was seeing on
the Lenovo since I had upgraded that
to a terabyte drive, problems likely
due to the way I had tried to clone
the original 500GB disk to the
terabyte version. Since the
reinstall, the disk is much happier,
and I am able to run normal
maintenance and diagnostics on it,
as well as automated compression,
something the new disk refused to
do, so something worked.
I normally have
a backup for each vital piece of
equipment - cellphone, laptop, etc.
So, as I only have the one
Blackberry - my last upgrade had a
$50 discount provided I returned the
"old" Blackberry I replaced - I had
been thinking about getting another.
An issue with Blackberry and
T-Mobile is that only the
Blackberrys T-Mobile sells itself
have the AWS frequencies necessary
to support 3G and 4G, not to mention
its WiFi Calling (UMA) feature. I
had been looking at the refurbished
Z10s available from T-Mobile's
website, but at almost $300 I found
them a bit steep for my wallet, even
though a new Z10 lists at $468. I
was waiting for them to come down
when RIM announced they would not
renew their T-Mobile contract, and
so April 25 turned out to be the
cutoff date.
For those
interested, my T-Mobile lines are
now all "paid up" - none are subject
to contract any more, and I own the
handsets on them. Unlike other
carriers, T-Mobile switches its
subscribers to month-to-month
service when their contract is up,
and they do not owe money on
handsets, always has done. That
means I don't have the very latest
greatest Galaxys or iPhones, but
then I really don't see what they
would bring me. What apps I actually
need I have on my Blackberry Z10 or
Nokia C7 - one of the nice aspects
of this is that I can use my Nokia
as a GPS device, with Nokia's
excellent maps, while still being
able to use the Z10 to make calls
while I am in the car. The concept
of getting a super expensive
smartphone on which I then have to
do everything - dunno, ever tried to
take a call while you're using your
GPS device, which is downloading
email at the same time? I can tell
you, as a seasoned developer, that
the people who write these apps do
very shoddy work, don't test except
on the highest end devices, and
generally have little understanding
of data security. I don't even want
to get started on the amount of
personal information they do not
need their apps insist on,
nevertheless - setting up LinkedIn,
the other day, it insisted on having
access to my phone book, and the
details of my T-Mobile account -
why?
About the first
thing that happened after I posted
my below Blackberry piece was a
response from a kind soul who
thought I should switch to an iPhone
(and throw out my Nokia and Galaxy
and Windows PCs and and switch to
Apple devices - to be honest, if I
wanted to switch to a UNIX computer
with X-Windows, which is what an
Apple computer is, I could do that
in a heartbeat, I worked on those as
a developer for decades). That
meant, of course, that the
respondent hadn't really read my
blog entry, as I did mention that I
had actually bought the
Blackberry Blighter, but underneath
that, the person mentions, in
machine-like fashion, all of the
vapid marketing arguments Apple
throws at the peeps. Yes, you can
turn off and wipe a stolen iPhone
remotely - but you can do that with
an Android device and a Blackberry,
too. Yes, there's Facetime - but
Skype is vendor-independent - when
is the last time you've seen a
Facetime interview on broadcast
television? And to be honest, you
could throw out the "Apple" and put
in "Samsung" and you'd have exactly
the same marketing blurb. Most
importantly - the consumer gets a
"free" high end phone from the
carrier, provided they extend their
contract until 2084 or therabouts.
And partake of the latest 1289G
service plan, because that is
"required" for these handsets.
I even managed to eventually find a
cradle, so I can use my Blackberry
Z10 in night mode, as an alarm
clock, with just the phone alert
turned on. I've gotten used to that,
over the years, although my last
Blackberry, the Torch 2 9810, didn't
have the cradle capability. So I am
happy...
My next
project is a new air intake assembly
for the Durango. When I was
servicing its 4.7 litre V8, last
year, I noticed that the air intake
assembly has an enormous amount of
air filtering and noise reduction.
That works well, at least the noise
reduction does, I guess this being
an overhead camshaft engine makes it
noisier than what the Americans were
used to - by the time this model
Durango was built, Daimler had taken
over Dodge owner Chrysler, and that
brought a whole bunch of German
engineering to these shores. Anyway,
we'll find out soon enough - I need
to do some video taping and data
recording, but then I will install a
high flow low resistance intake and
see what, if any, the difference is,
from intake manifold pressure to
noise level. I'll post it all here.
Before I move on to more mundane
matters, Edward Snowden's
defense of his actions sounds very
much like a contrived and well
rehearsed story to me, the kind of
stuff Putin is known for, too.
Snowden took off from his Hawaii
station without even telling his
girlfriend, holed up in Hong Kong,
part of the PRC, where he knew the
US government would not be able to
even talk to him, and then headed
for Moscow, where it looks like
emperor Putin thought it was a good
idea to put one over on the
Americans. In the interim, Glenn
Greenwald, a former Washington D.C.
attourney living in Brazil, working
for the Guardian, was recruited to
interview him, even going so far as
having his Brazilian boyfriend act
as a clandestine information
carrier. None of that boils down to
being a patriot. Yes, it would have
been hard to "spill the beans", but
many of us know what the American
security services get up to, and
know that it isn't always kosher,
and there are careful and safe folk
working for the Washington Post or
the New York Times Mr. Snowden could
have spoken to with minimal risk. I
fully assume that Snowden and
Greenwald have been handsomely
maintained by the Guardian, nothing
wrong with that, and Greenwald's new
blockbuster book, and speaking fees,
will have certainly taken good care
of both of them. There is little in
Mr. Greenwald's background that
could have provided him with
informed insight in the workings of
the security services, and with his
US dollar journalistic work, and his
boyfriend's income, Brazil is a very
cheap place to live. I even am
inclined to think Snowden didn't
have that much "inside information"
- he wasn't at the CIA for long
enough, and folks like Snowden who
have secret clearance become
contractors to parlay their position
and clearance into a lot more money
than a civil service position would
have paid. It is all a boringly
common scenario.
A bit of light at the end of the
tunnel.. I am still working on the
air intake, as it is a bit of a DIY
unit without much of a manual, but I
think I am just about there. As I
mentioned, I wanted to make sure I
could capture engine readings, and
eventually managed to get OBDScope
running reliably on a Nokia C7.
While I bought that new, this proves
that you can buy a used cellphone
and use it for a particular piece of
software, because running engine
diagnostics on a cellphone that you
use for everyday functionality like
taking calls, email and perhaps
navigation is not a good idea, if
not a downright headache. This works
brilliantly - I normally use the C7
as my home phone, and on the road
for navigation, but I have found the
navigation app on my new Blackberry
Z10 is a worthy substitute. And
after a fair amount of detail work,
rerunning hoses and leads, and
verifying everything is where it
needs to be, the air intake is
working well. I had to make some
adjustments to install the air
temperature gauge, which gets pulled
back out of the intake if you leave
the wiring the way it was installed
at the factory, and I found the
plastic vacuum hose that came with
the intake is cheap crap, it kinks
within hours, but Prestone makes a
perfect fit sturdy rubber hose you
can pull off the rack at your auto
parts store.
Apart from a finicky Bluetooth
connection on the Nokia I am using
for diagnostics, I think I am more
or less done with the air intake. I
need to make a few more miles before
filling up the tank and establishing
the MPG rating, but this morning I
reset the PCM (Powertrain Control
Module, the "brains" of the engine),
which is now learning about the new
air ratios and temperature and
stuff. She runs nicely, I do notice
a loud roar when accelerating on the
highway, but that is as it is
supposed to be. Other than that, the
engine is quiet and runs smoothly,
slightly louder than before. I do
notice that the coolant temperature
is slightly higher, but with less
fluctuation - and that could mean I
have more horsepower, which means
less "strain" on the engine. The
diagnostics tell me that when I
accelerate up to highway speeds, the
air intake temperature drops some 15
degrees, which is what a "cold air"
intake is all about, I suppose. The
whole "cold air" story is a bit of a
misnomer. In the olden days, the air
would be preheated in the
carburetor, by a warm coolant line
from the cooling system, as
carburetors were prone to freezing -
but those days are long gone, fuel
injected engines don't have the type
of fuel evaporation carbureted
engines did.
Hmm. Next day.
Weedwhacker fixed, hot water tank
drained and its air intake fixed -
no idea the insulation was
obstructing that. Put a 500GB
Western Digital drive in the Vaio,
not the one I intended, it turned
out there was a 5" drive in the
thing, and I did not feel like
getting a upsize caddy for the 2.5"
drive I had available. Impatient. So
I ripped the drive out of the Tivo
enclosure I wasn't using for the
Tivo anyway, and that works fine,
actually very silent and seems to
run at the same response time as the
old one. Having said that, the Tivo
won't boot off the new drive, so I
bought drive creation software off
the internet, but now I have a hard
time getting the software to talk to
the Linux drive designators. That
shouldn't be a major issue, but I've
never run UNIX on this Lenovo, so...
maybe I'll disassemble the Vaio
again, put the Tivo drive in there,
and see if I can get that to act
like a UNIX box. The Lenovo, with
its SATA ports and other "stuff", is
a headache in that respect. The
Vaio, whose architecture is simpler,
could be easier. Fingers crossed.
You can see its innards on the
picture here, not really easy to
open up, but what the hey, I think
the Tivo is not broken, just
something went wrong with the
original drive - which, on a Tivo,
runs 24/7, in this case since 2009,
and its cooling isn't brilliant.
More to follow..
Last but not least, I finished
adjusting the new air intake on my
Durango, and as luck would have it,
we're in the midddle of a heatwave,
here in the Northwest. I am
emphasizing this because this entire
saga began with me coming
cross-continent in a heatwave, in a
badly overheating Durango. It took
me a while to figure out what the
problems were, but I think I can
safely say the work I did on it last
summer, combined with the rest of
the maintenance I did this year,
certainly fixed the overheating, and
as it turns out the cold air intake
I installed gave me that extra
little bit of power that really
makes the engine "happy and smooth".
Running the car with the A/C on
high, in 90s temperatures, the
engine not only doesn't run hot,
with the A/C condensor fan kicked in
the coolant temperature actually
comes down, and the compressor
cycles - IOW, the heat exchanger is
getting plenty of cooling, even in
high heat and full sun. That makes
me really happy. An engine with more
power will generate less heat for
the same work effort, and that is
clearly the case here. The coolant
temperature is visibly lower, when
driving around in the summer heat,
even to the point the auxiliary
electrical fan, which kicks in when
the A/C comes on, as well as when
the coolant temperature gets above
120° Fahrenheit, has not been
needed, in regular urban driving.
So where does
this Ukraine problem come
from? It comes from our (the West)
failure to push back on Putin when
he took the Crimea. We decided that
Putin could make a case for taking
back the Crimea, that the place was
full of "ethnic Russians" anyway
(what the heck are those?), and so
we let him push the Ukranians out of
their own province.
So: the
problem I was having with Google
Contacts and my new Blackberry
Z10 had nothing to do with
Blackberry or the Playbook or the
Z10 or Moi. Because: I have not made
any changes (other than reloading
the Gmail account, which made no
difference) but today, several weeks
and posts (!!) later, it all
suddenly works as advertised, Google
Contacts sync automagically to the
Z10's address book, and vice versa,
this without there being BIS nor BES
on my T-Mobile account. I do have an
IP connection with RIM, but that is
an optional thing, although it has
networking benefits I would not want
to do without. So: all sorted. And
if you have problems with anything
involving a Google product for
heaven's sake blog about it, because
they do read yer stuff. I've noticed
this before with their products -
Device tracker, notably, was all
broken until I wrote about it. Which
reminds me.. sheesh, Android
Devicemanager now works from
Microsoft Internet Explorer again!
Woohoo! The Word is Blogmagic *grin*
Yep, that is
me in the ER - dog lunged at me,
lost my footing, hit the kerb -
collapsed lung, facial injuries,
compound hand fracture, the works.
Brutal. With my left hand out of
action, one hand typing makes
updating this blog a pain, I'll
see if I can find my dictation
software. I am on the mend, so not
to worry....
A new installation of Dragon
NaturallySpeaking is a necessity,
since my left hand is out of
action. I need some way to write
my blog, do website updates, and
write letters, and am hoping the
software can be made to work
reliably. I do have some
background noise from the window
fan, it is after all summer, and
am hoping that will be manageable.
This actually does not look too
bad, I'm going to have to do some
more testing and make the
necessary corrections, so that the
software will understand my
diction better, but it looks like
things are going reasonably well,
considering I originally couldn't
get his microphone to work at all.
I am currently working on an older
Sony VAIO desktop, since this
version of Dragon will not install
under Windows 8, so I cannot run
it on my Lenovo laptop any more.
The VAIO runs Windows 7, which it
seems to be happier with than
Windows 8, which I backed out of
it after a couple of weeks of
trying.
Remembering the last time I used
Dragon NaturallySpeaking, using
dictation meant you wrote a lot more
than was comfortable to read in a
blog. In other words, you can go on
talking, dictating, whining, until
you see blue in the face and
dictation software will faithfully
render it into your computer, by the
bucketful. The latter, at least the
way I look at it, is not pleasant
for the reader, who I believe wants
to read a paragraph or so, and then
be able to choose whether to go on
to the next paragraph, or to
someplace else. So, at the present
time, this is working well, and I
can be writing decent text as the
mood strikes me. I am at the present
time sat in my room and the
microphone has been set for mono
sound, which is probably what I did
wrong before. This headset, while
cheap, certainly works well with
Skype, and there is no reason why it
would not function well with Dragon.
Almost there...
My hand out of the cast, I can use chopsticks
again.. I had no idea that was that
important to me?!
OK... so that
backup didn't work either. I have
one suspicion, though - if you turn
off your display, and the computer
then tries to power its display
connection down, could that cause it
to hang? Necessary it isn't, I've
discovered that if you lock your
system it'll begin a turnoff
sequence a few minutes later, so
I've reset the full backup, and will
try that next. I glanced over the
Windows errors, but couldn't find
anything that made sense here, other
than (perhaps) the user interface
login, which presumably fails
because I have bypassed the
Microsoft login setup. Sheesh.
By the end of
the week, I should just about be
back to normal. It is truly amazing
how much is involved with the
recovery from what should have been
a simple fall.... I was able to bin
the yard waste and put the bin by
the kerb today, and by the end of
the week I should be able to wack
the weeds and mow the lawn. Since
the cast came off, I've had to be
really careful with my left hand, so
there were lots of things I just
didn't do, to reduce the risk of my
pinkie breaking again - the bone had
broken in three places, and the
joint had split, don't ask me how.
Onwards. So here,
through the good services of OFCOM,
as reported by the BBC, is your real
issue: kids are abandoning watching
the television set, opting
to access the world on their
tablets. I've thought this was
coming, and here it is: never mind
how big your TV is, and how
connected it is (with, of course, a
manufacturer mining your television
for personal data), a new generation
is using a connected device. No more
television, no more telephone, the
tablet will let you do all that,
even use Skype and similar services,
but for the most part this is a
generation that has little need for
talking, texting and messaging
instead. Other research
indicates that one in three people a
teen meets is an original internet
acquaintance. At which point some
scientist opines that this is very
risky, not realizing there are
people you cannot get to know "in
real life", simply because your
physical paths would never
intersect. Kids who grow up "on" the
internet develop safety mechanisms
that work as well as those we
developed meeting people in bars and
at parties, we're just in a
transitional phase, IMHO. I've been
lucky enough to have been meeting
people on the internet since the
late 1970's, and while I've been
disappointed with some, I've never
had major issues. One I actually
married. I would say it is actually
easier to do safety screening with
an internet acquaintance than it is
with a bar acquaintance - the
article at the link above has some
teens commenting on that. Your new
friend does not come up in any
searches? Fuggedaboutit.
Jeez. One moment
you note an armed civilian in Canada
taking down an armed assailant, and
preventing much loss of life, and
you think "Thank heavens for guns".
And then a fourteen year old in
Marysville, up the road from me,
unloads a magazine on his friends at
school, and then blows his own brain
out. An American Indian with gun
experience, an accomplished hunter,
there seems to be no indication what
made him snap. There isn't a
solution to the American gun debate,
anyway, there are enough guns in
circulation in the United States to
keep gun dealers in bread 'n butter
for a hundred years. All you can do
is teach children gun stuff when
they are young, so they develop
proper respect for firearms, and
learn how to lock 'em up. Just
because you have a carry permit, or
you live in a state with open carry
laws, doesn't mean you have to have
a gun on you.
I
need to do a serious piece on data
and device security. There is
so much drivel being spouted on the
airwaves, down to when you should or
should not read your email, and
whether or not you should control
your kids' device use.. Email, at
least fromn those accounts where you
get your important email, should be
coming to your smartphone - mine has
for many years. So that beeps when I
get email, and then I take a quick
look, and if it is not important or
answerable I delete it, and the rest
I pull to my laptop when I get to my
desk, and deal with it. Email is not
something you can deal with once a
day, not any more, email has
superseded the telephone in terms of
communication, to the point that
some folks will call you because
they don't want to commit their
thoughts in writing. Important to
know. Twitter? Facebook? Twitter is
public, and therefore not a secure
medium, and I personally think
Facebook should not be used for work
related communication, because the
Facebook organization reads and
parses everything that goes through
their servers (and even stuff that
doesn't). I cringe every time I see
an article in the press accompanied
by people's personal pictures or
video, like those of that Ebola
nurse Pham, that are copyrighted
by Facebook or Twitter or Google.
That's not right - we have copyright
laws whose rules should not be able
to be overridden by legal language
in someone's terms & conditions.
What's the point of a law if an
organization can just do some legal
language and "defang" the law by
making you click on something that
does not even state it is an
approval process? Technically, the
Post Office could redo its rules and
say affixing a stamp gives them the
right to open all your mail and use
your private information, wouldn't
you think? Because that is what
Facebook and Google and Yahoo and
Microsoft do 24/7...
I have found
that when running IPTV over WiFi,
where the source is in Europe
(timing is an issue here), my Vaio
displays more reliably from an
802.11G router than from my 802.11N
router (the Vaio itself supports
both). I should hastily add that the
Vaio is running Windows 7, which it
was not designed for - it is an
older All-in-One flat panel PC,
which still does very well, but I
have had to manually tweak a few
device drivers to get it to run
without errors. Yes, I could get a
newer PC or laptop, but I just love
tweaking older but technically
up-to-date equipment to see how well
it does, with a reasonable amount
of, but not too much, TLC. Not too
long ago I completely disassembled
it - first time since a motherboard
replacement in 2010 - which wasn't
easy, where would we be without
Youtube, because it isn't possible
to fully clean its innards from dust
otherwise. I do "blow it out" and
vacuum the slots, every month, but I
can tell you this was a necessary
exercise.
So Formula 1,
which had already been transforming
itself into the most boring thing on
Earth, with two guys from one team
winning alternatingly they can drop
the rest of the teams, is now in
monetary decline, run by Bernie
Ecclestone, who has amassed a
fortune that is larger than the
value of all teams together. When
the Austin, TX race is run, the BBC
and others cannot broadcast it live,
they have to make do with excerpts,
because Fox/Sky, Rupert Murdoch's
playpen, own the rights to this one,
and prevent other broadcasters in
markets they are present in from
carrying the race live. The net
consequence of all that is that most
people who could be interested and
would watch it and see the
advertising can't watch it and can't
look at the Hamilton chappie driving
his Blackberry Mercedes. Which,
apparently, in our brave New World,
is the new purpose of sponsoring, in
the United States supported by the
FCC: making sure many viewers can't
watch something live. Doesn't matter
if you pay for cable or taxes, you
can be excluded if you have the
wrong subscription. To be honest,
Ecclestone should use some of his
river of money to finance the ailing
teams, and then go away and hand
over the reigns to someone who is
more attuned to the audience and has
a future vision. I mean, think about
it - circuits and cars and drivers
carry advertising, and now we sell
the rights to broadcast to someone
for a lot of money, in such a way
that the majority of people who
could watch the advertising cannot.
As I am trying
to get my head around putting a
course together, to teach at UW, and
how to do that - a lecture is one
thing, that I know how to do, but
I've never done a series, well, not
intentionally, anyway - I come
across the FCC talking about how to
revamp 911, which appears to
be somewhat in disrepair. And then I
read that the FCC tries to figure
out where the carrier responsibility
starts, and the consumer's
responsibility ends.
I do realize I
very rarely post personal stuff like
the gout episode, my recent
hospitalization being somewhat of an
exception. I think the last time I
posted something like that was when
I had cancer surgery and radiation
treatment, back in 2010 (I survived,
thank you) - but while I mentioned
that hospitalization, I didn't
mention much else, I've never been
given to talk about "moi" a lot. But
I am thinking that management of the
self, to some extent, is risk
management, and as I experience
things, from being a 9/11 first
responder, and being diagnosed with
PTSD afterwards, many years of
arthritis, thyroid cancer and the
treatment of it, and generally the
various stages of aging, I might as
well write some of it up, and
perhaps teach a class on it. No, I
have no desire to give a loooooong
talk on PBS on how to make your
heart younger, I believe that is
pretty much nonsense (sorry), but
insofar as I can perhaps share some
of my experiences, and perhaps help
the odd person with similar
experiences, sure, that'd be a good
thing. I mean, I am a writer,
photographer, I have film- and video
experience, I have been a movie- and
theatre producer, so perhaps I can
put all that together a bit.
So the populace
need good, free, medical care,
especially when they are young, and
not the kind you get on TV. I don't
think Dr. Fuhrman has capsules for
indigent people - for the moment,
his capsules cost 33 cents each, you
can't get them from Costco, and you
need internet and a credit card. I
mean, uninsured people cost the
taxpayer rivers of money, when they
get old and sick. And the lack of
free medical care actually kills
people, lots of them - how can you
justify that?
Having said
that, Obama isn't doing any weird
stuff, so the Bush monikers really
do not apply to him. Back to Putin:
is he following echoes of the Soviet
era, which, after all, is where he
came of age, or does the average
Russian really want that old
territory back? Even without Ukraine
and Georgia and Estonia and
whatever, Russia is still large
enough that it takes over 60 hours
to traverse it by train. Much of
that is a bit frozen, but still, it
is Russia. What is clear with Putin
is that he is like the Iranians and
the North Koreans: he won't
negotiate. At this point in time,
Mr. Putin has played his gas-and-oil
card to the point European countries
are beginning to source their energy
elsewhere - it was nice while it
lasted, they say, but using energy
as a weapon is not what we signed up
for. So that's there - everything
Putin does seems belligerent - tanks
to Ukraine, bombers and jets to
Europe and soon over the Atlantic,
but when all is said and done the
income Russia was getting out of its
gas and oil riches is dwindling, and
we're going to make sure it will
dwindle much more. Soon, we'll start
sending our own crew capsules to the
International Space Station, Elon
Musk is just about ready to build
those, and that will obsolete
Vladimir even more.
As I
checked what mail options I had
available, I suddenly realized I had
an extra Gigabyte mail account with
my hoster, one I had never
activated, so I am now in the middle
of doing that. If all this works OK,
and I have enough mail storage to
survive a 24 hour flight, I may
therefore let AT&T's offering
go. I am happy with my current
internet hoster, having dumped
Network Solutions a few years ago
for deluging me with phone calls and
emails for no reason.
I rarely cook a
proper dinner, these days, I share a
kitchen and just don't like pots and
pans and stuff sitting around in the
way of other folks. But I ran into
some nice 50% off sirloin at
the supermarket today - I'll be
damned if I pay $11/lb for steak, if
you've noticed, the prices of beef
and chicken has been going up
considerably, over the summer. I
wonder whether the repurposing of
feed corn for ethanol production has
something to do with it, of course
the oil prices over the summer did
not help - there it is, ethanol
production uses 40% of American
corn. If that is the case, some of
those prices should come down, I
paid $2.74 per gallon, the other
day, it was $3.90 per gallon of
regular as recently as July - not an
average, it is what I paid at
Costco. Anyway, when I got the
Blackberry out I noticed that my
sirloin-and-broccoli combo looked
rather picturesque, I take pictures
of food I cook frequently, but
rarely post them.
By
the way, as the BBC is broadcasting
massive warnings about the presence
of campylobacter in
supermarket chicken as wel as on the
packaging, yes, if you mass produce
livestock at an accelerated rate for
food production, this is going to
happen - it happens with veggies,
too. So the steak you see here,
cooked by yours truly, is
deliciously pink inside, but that
does not kill the bacteria. And I
would have done it red, except I
could not get the synchronization
with the broccoli right, and sirloin
is overcooked in seconds. But
chicken (and pork) are cheaper, and
thus higher risk food, and so should
be even more cooked to death, like
eggs. With chicken and pork, that
has the added advantage of getting
the amply present fat out. The 125
milliliters of fat you see here
amazingly comes from only three lbs
of chicken - a mix of breasts (fat)
and thighs (less fat). Cooking the
chicken thru-and-thru, then draining
the fat, and using healthy oil (like
olive, or my favourite, sesame) to
finish the chicken is a good idea.
Shame to throw out the deliciously
flavoured chicken fat, but there it
is (don't forget to run a hot tap
when you are draining fat, or it
will congeal in your drain).
Finally
some research that
hits my hobby horse head on:
"trending" applies only to a very
limited subset of the human race,
even in "connected" places. You just
very simply can't take decisions
based on "big data" garnered from
social networks, as they don't form
a representative slice of society,
the information coming only from
social network users, and not even
from all of them. Yet, this is being
done every day. I've found, from
whenever they started, these online
surveys the stupidest thing
imaginable. You have no control, and
no information, over who does and
doesn't take part, and you have no
proof of the veracity of the
information respondents do give -
if, in a survey, you, a 58 year old
male, say you're a 27 year old
female, that's how the "big data"
goes down. On top of that, you're
completely dependent on the
questions the originators ask, as
the vast majority of surveys only
handle fixed values, not variables,
and they are certainly not capable
of processing natural language
input. One of the most important
questions and statistics - who does
not take part in surveys, and why
not, can never be answered. Not for
nothing is the United States Census
legally required to be answered by
every householder in the nation, and
do census takers come out to all
those who have not responded to
"make 'em".
So I have a bit
of experience with the vagaries of
data collection, and of then doing
something with the data, is what I
am trying to say here. The entire
"big data" story strongly reminds me
of the spreadsheet craze - I've had
people come to me with enormous
spreadsheets, some large enough that
you could not open them on a Windows
PC that did not have extra memory
installed. And you know, hopefully,
what the risk is with these
spreadsheets (and an important
reason I rarely use them, and if I
do, I keep 'em small) - one wrong
keystroke and the result may be
skewed, and you won't know. Even if
you did, you wouldn't know why
unless you went through the entire
spreadsheet cell-by-cell, and even
then... Creating a spreadsheet is programming,
usually carried out by
non-programmers, and work that, like
all good programming, is never
audited.
No
real reason for posting the salmon
sandwich picture I took, the other
day, and I am not really happy about
the depth of field, with the bounce
flash I should have done better. So
maybe I'll try that shot again. But
I do like the way my Nikon
handles the colours, no smartphone
can better that - and having a
"real" lens helps, of course.
In the meantime,
I've managed to (cheaply) snarf one
of the last ever Nokia phones
available, the Nokia Lumia 635,
$65 plus tax, complete with T-Mobile
WiFi Calling and 4G LTE. It is sold
as prepaid, but since I am a TMO
customer with a SIM card to spare it
is postpaid for me. I just needed to
activate a mini-SIM with the number
that came out of my older Nokia C7.
That's still going strong, but I
figured a new Nokia would come with
free maps and navigation, as they
own Mapquest, and indeed it did. I
was going to keep the C7 as a spare,
these days you do need a handset
handy in case your main one fails,
but C. bought it off me as soon as I
switched over, part of his effort to
reduce outgoings by not forking over
buckets of money to the cable
company for the "bundled" telephone.
Part
of the reason I wanted this handset
is that it has Windows Phone,
it immediately upgraded itself to
the latest, 8.1, and so I can learn
that a bit, and see how it gets on
with Windows 8 on the laptop (8.1 I
backed out, that's a data collection
machine, not an operating system).
What the 635 does not have is a
flash, or a front facing camera,
just in case you're interested in
getting one. I don't need either,
since I have that and more on the
Blackberry, so nothing lost, but if
you want "the works" the 635 is not
for you. I just don't think phones
need to be "everything and the
kitchen sink", phones are dirt cheap
these days, and you can get all the
bells and whistles for less than
half of what a "full featured
smartphone" would cost, nor do you
need a "contract". Anyway, if I run
into anything amazing on the Lumia
I'll let you know. It is pretty
spiffy and I like its Finnish
"austerity", and much to my
surprise, the Windows tiles are
rather fun, as a touch interface on
a phone. But I cannot turn on the
tracking software without allowing
Microsoft to send me advertising,
which I don't think is what the
Federal government or the DoJ
wanted. Blackberry nor Google do
that, as a condition for using their
tracking system...
The
more I see people stuck in routines,
or set in their ways, the more it is
clear to me one's mental as well as
physical health is best served by change,
embracing it, self inflicting it,
and so on. Having said that, I know
that is easy to say, if you don't
have to go to the office in the
morning. Having said that, I am
lucky having worked as a freelance
photojournalist for many years, when
you generally have to make sure you
have a schedule that works, do
maintenance and admin, because
you're your own little company and
anything you don't do nobody is
going to do for you.
Got
positive and constructive commentary
on my training course trial
run, I'll have to spend a bit of
time trying to "make change without
making change", if you get my drift.
I suppose this is another reason to
relearn Powerpoint, and see if I can
make the presentation redesign a bit
quicker. In the meantime, I am not
quite sure where my money went, and
as I now need to build a Canada trip
into my schedule - passport renewal
- it is time to get the calculator
out. Having said that, my mobile
refund is on its way, and my credit
card fraud reimbursements have
arrived. It was wholesale slaughter,
but the Bank was very helpful and
managed it well, it was just a bitch
having to make half a dozen midnight
long distance calls to get it
sorted.
Awright, that's
the car just about done - I'll
tackle the brake pads when I come
back from Canada, which is where I
took the picture - mostly because I
don't want to do maintenance I've
never done before and then drive
hundreds of miles without proper
testing. But the rest of it's done,
oil change, radiator hose, wheel
rotation, checked and burped the
coolant, transmission service,
replaced an LED fog bulb, even fixed
the power receptacles that weren't
functioning properly. I've not yet
washed the car, but that's mostly
because it still dips to freezing at
night, and that might cause frozen
condensation, although rubber strips
and seals seem OK. Another week or
two, and the temps will be way up,
and I can start spring cleaning.
Besides, like when you fly, and take
used luggage, don't clean your car
before a trip, keep it dirty and
looking used.
Let's see, what
else is there. Back to the gym first
thing today, yesterday I took a lazy
day, slept in - I can't remember the
last time I did that. The Vancouver
trip was just tiring, not massively
so, but compared with the East
Coast, everything here seems scaled
down a bit, I guess I got used to
six- and eight lane highways over
the years. And I realized that at
least this part of the West Coast
(including the bits of Canada I've
visited) is massively Asian.
Sometimes I run around and think I
could be in Beijing - the other day
I went to the H Mart, a Korean store
that's more like a shopping center,
and once you walk in there you don't
feel you're in the USA, huge food
court, too. At the local gym, I
would estimate close to half the
crowd is Asian - Asian from Asia,
for the most part, and that is a
completely new experience for me.
Same in Vancouver, Asian doctor's
offices, big Chinese banks, etc.
I have to tell
you I haven't really liked Jeremy
Clarkson that much - I thought
he was crude and sexist, but credit
where credit's due, it's probably
Jezza who made Top Gear into what it
is today, and he and the BBC did a
good job of that. I am not sure why
the entire press seems to insist
Clarkson made Top Gear - it was the
BBC's production team that put it
all together, they do good stuff
with talent, and should be
complimented over creating the
Clarkson, who eventually got out of
hand. Being at the top of your game
is hard - but you can tell he is an
overweight smoker, and yes, that
does make him a dinosaur. Sad that
his career ends up like this, but
perhaps he'll get with the program
and tidy up his life. His is, for
now, heading for heart attack
territory.
The
sandwich? That's steak tartare, raw
ground beef, raw egg yolk, raw
onion, bit of raw olive oil, some
cucumber underneath, ground pepper
and capers. Hadn't eaten this for a
long time, eating completely raw
meat and egg really is high risk,
but then this stuff is delicious,
and it is quite healthy (if it isn't
contaminated). After all, I eat
sashimi, and that is raw fish, my
guess is that may be high risk as
well. We live in a world where too
much food for too many people is
produced at speeds that are too
high, and you do need to make sure
you eat this stuff where
refrigeration of foodstuffs is of a
high standard. Sashimi, of course,
eaten in a good Japanese or Korean
restaurant, coomes from a fish that
is as fresh as possible, killed just
before the serving is made. The
Japanese go quite far in this
regard, they fly live fish from
Japanese waters, tightly quality
controlled, around the world in
specially adapted aircraft, if you
ever wondered why good Sashimi is
really really expensive.
As the cherry
blossoms are out all over the
Seattle area, and the weather has
really been un-spring-like, at least
as far as the Northeast is
concerned, I was invited to join
friends for the Thai Buddhist New
Year celebration ("Songkran")
at the Atammayatarama Monastery in
Woodinville. Pleasant and a lot more
civilised than the noisy and
boisterous celebrations in Thailand,
they had a room set asides for us
"farangs", foreigners without Thai
language skills, and after offerings
to the monks there was a shared
buffet with truly wonderful Thai
food. Set in a distinctly rural part
of King County the monastery is
located in the foothills of the
Cascade Mountains, under the smoke
of Mount Baker, "Koma Kulshan" in
the native American Indian languages
of the region.
This is really
annoying, in many ways. Thanks to
the Silver Sneakers
program my Verizon/UHC health
insurance program is now
offering as an inclusion to the
policy, I've managed to get my
condition back to where it was years
ago, I've lost twenty pounds (but as
I am gaining muscle mass it is
probably more), my waist is back at
34, which is truly astonishing, and
I've gained as much stamina as my
thyroid medication will allow. One
consideration I had not given
thought to was that LA Fitness built
a center within walking distance
from my home last year, and that
makes it much easier to go and work
out every day. It isn't something I
would have ever considered as a
factor, but there you go. But at the
same time, I seem to have lost my
writing propensity, and my course
writing endeavour has ground
to a screeching halt. I am trying to
figure out why, what the correlation
is, how I can get back on track, but
so far not massively successfully.
Kate is, as I understand the BBC,
doing much better than me, but then
she married into a nice family. I
should, for the sake of
truthfulness, add that my
rheumatologist has managed to wean
me off some of the medications I
had, in some instances, been taking
for decades, and I should imagine
this brings changes that only
gradually become apparent. 
I had planned
to finish at least a blog entry over
the weekend, but during the week my
trusty old (2009) VAIO All-In-One
began to develop a noise I did not
like. I am not sure whether it was a
fan or the hard disk, but it got
worse as the week progressed, to the
point it woke me up a couple of
times (but as a systems engineer,
anything computer that "sounds
different" is alarming). Anyway, I
ended up going to Best Buy to see if
I could find a cheap laptop,
although I really can't afford new
equipment right now, I didn't think
the VAIO was about to die, but then
again I know from my lab years that
once a system gets noisier it is on
its way out. I gave it a good air
clean, but that made no difference.
Umm,
I am not at all sure how I haven't
managed to write a thing, in almost
a month. Actually, I wrote stuff,
but then came to a dead stop and
didn't post anything. And then I
didn't do one iota of work on the
training course (which now won't
happen until the fall, but that
isn't a reason not to work on it).
Considering it is just about summer
and I have a list of things I wanted
to do, and then didn't do any of
them, I should be ashamed. And I am
- I just can't figure out how I
ground to a complete halt. I am
doing worse than Jeremy Clarkson. I
mean, I can understand how he feels
he is out in left field, having lost
what must seem like his raison
d'être overnight, but I am sure his
phone is ringing off the hook. Mine
isn't.
Having said
that, the Toshiba has, at $229, two
features my 2012 Lenovo does not -
USB 3.0, and built in Bluetooth (the
Lenovo does have a USB/eSATAp port,
useful for me as I have a bunch of
eSATA backup drives). As the
Bluetooth sits on the system bus,
and does not need USB bandwidth, and
the Toshiba's chipset has a high
speed USB bus right into the ports,
I/O in the Toshiba is significantly
faster, even though the CPU is
slower than the older Lenovo's. This
is, for me at least, interesting to
the point I can actually use the
technology, which may not be the
case with everybody. With the basic
anemic flavour of Windows it is sold
with, and little documentation how
to rebuild the system to speed it
up, the majority of consumers won't
be able to use much of what this
system can do. Additionally, the
Toshiba firmware with Windows 8.1
Pro is able to recognize Blu-ray
data disks, and write to them,
giving me the ability to store up to
25GB of data per BD-R side. Although
I have had the relevan software and
compatible drives for years, this is
the first time I can actually write
to a BD-R right-out-of-the-box,
without jumping through software and
firmware hoops. Amazing.
An interesting
project - adjusting the top speed of
a London bus on-the-go, depending on
location and circumstances:
Ah. Summer. I
didn't really see that coming until
we got this ridiculous heatwave -
90s in an area where the normal June
temperature is in the 70s. Last year
I got the feeling we were having
climate change going on - for the
first time in my life I got
sunburnt, unusual, unpleasant, my
dermatologist opined this was age
related... I am sure it is, but I am
sure, at the same time, that if it
weren't for global warming it might
not have "erupted" on me. So this
year, annoyingly, no shorts and
tees, I guess that's that. I've
spent too many years in the tropics
not to know that the natives, there,
largely don't do shorts and tees,
and so I probably shouldn't complain
too much. Kids, the sun is dangerous,
and can do lasting damage, even kill
you. Don't. And remember we're all
subject to global warming, and it
won't be until several generations
hence before our bodies adjust.
Trust me. I never had a tiny bit of
sunburn - but then I do not "tan" or
go to the beach, never have, never
will - until 2014, and I can just
tell the climate has changed.
As I didn't know
what bits in the support systems of
a car with 100,000 miles on the
clock needed attention, I tried to
figure out what was necessary, and
in the process did much of the
maintenance, from replacing the
coolant and the sparkplugs to the
PCV valve and the serpentine belt.
Many
years ago, I lived in North London,
with a partner from the Orthodox
Jewish community, we ran a business
there together. To all intents and
purposes, the family treated me as a
son-in-law, unusually, since they
weren't exactly Liberal, and I am
not exactly Jewish - when relatives
visited from Israel they would not
break bread with the family with me
at the table, going into the next
room instead, to loudly say Shabbath
prayers while we lit the candles.
The patriarch, Michael, a Bulgarian
Jew who had made it to Vienna, then
managed to get a permit to leave
from there to London, where he
joined the British merchant navy,
had seen enough discrimination that
he would not deny his daughter her
life - his son, too, had married a
gentile. He told me the SS guard who
endorsed his passport with a "May
Not Return" stamp had said "You're
lucky, if it were up to me I'd pull
you off this train". 
Don't you hate
it when that happens? United
Healthcare, my insurer, has
incorrect medical information on
file, and I just know that if I call
them they're going to ask for the
correct information, when what I
want to know is how and from whom
they got this stuff, and what else
they have that is incorrect. I had a
similar situation with University
of Washington Medical, the
other day, when they flatly refused
to work with me to find out how they
had incorrect insurance information
on file. When I filed a formal
complaint, they figured out what had
happened, waived all of my
outstanding copay, and sent a nice
letter, but that isn't a replacement
for a simple patient advocate,
called in by a customer service
agent when they can't solve your
problem. Considering the number of
people employed in health care,
patient advocates could keep
patients happy and save rivers of
money in providing adequate
solutions, instead of having to redo
procedures, and deal with unhappy
customers and unhappy staff. Then I
have a stupid letter from the Dutch
Department of Social Services,
which states that something I have
recorded proof of didn't happen,
along the lines of
"what-are-you-talking-about". So I
now should follow that up, as well,
as soon as I have sufficient
statistical evidence. I just hate
having to do any of that stuff, but
if I don't, the problems won't go
away - especially my medical
insurance having completely
erroneous medical information on
file is a concern. Similarly, I was
being cyberstalked by an ex for a
year, until I finally involved the
police, which took care of the
problem. Why are these things
necessary?
Believe it or
not, Spotify has made the incredibly
stupid move to incorporate a
requirement for you to
hand over your contacts' private
information stored on your mobile
device, and added to that a
requirement you obtain your
contacts' consent to do so. It was
only a matter of time before some
idiot, Facebook, Google, Microsoft,
Spotify, realized they're helping
themselves to your smartphone
database, and that is not exactly
legal, so some out-of-control lawyer
tried to devise legalese that makes
you responsible to Spotify to
legally provide it with information
that isn't yours.
So last week's storm-and-outage
here in the greater Seattle area
came as a bad surprise - we were
without power for 30 hours, and for
much of that time, had no cell
service either. Lots of trees down,
and though someone told me that was
because of the drought, that doesn't
work for me. One of the problems in
urban areas, you see, is that trees
stand, by themselves, in lawns, and
as the lawns are watered the trees
develop shallow root systems. In
nature, trees normally have to dig
deep for water, while they reach
high for light, and they grow in
huge clusters, but the urban
environment changes all that,
considerably. Add to that the lack
of right-of-way maintenance - in
rural Virginia, and suburban New
York, utility crews come by every
year to trim trees down and back
from the power lines and -poles -
and you're ready for disaster when a
really powerful storm strikes. I've
not seen that here, and I have seen
people grow trees and shrubbery
right underneath power lines. We
need to manage our greenery much
more diligently, here in the Pugent
Sound. Perhaps the enormous
wildfires, larger than anything
we've ever seen here before, have
some bearing on that, as well. The
fires are nature taking care of
itself, but we build in that, now -
same as Californians build in the
desert, and used to water it so they
can grow stuff. Well, that's done
now. We need a good scientific team
to work on connecting this storm
with the fires and the weather and
stuff. You know? The picture shows
the morning after the night before -
Safeway manager Bob, around 10am, restocking
perishable shelves, I think he
started with yoghurt.
You still here?
Sorry if I get a bit involved... The
main problem, then, is that I had to
free up my old two terabyte backup
drive, which meant laboriously
transferring its aged load to a
couple of the Seagates. And this is
where you find that the ports
available on laptops, be they USB2,
eSATA, or USB3, take hours
transferring very large amounts of
data. Worse, those ports sometimes
stop working when the screen savers
cut in, so it can be more than a
pain. It is transferring 250GB at a
time, then transferring that again
to another backup, and so on, and so
forth. I've so far been moving data
for the better part of a week.
Almost done, to be sure, but this
isn't something you want to do every
other month.
I am checking
the other side, which I didn't mess
up, today, just to make sure I have
the same brake pads and properly
mounted clips on both sides. Not
helped by the Youtube help
videos on the internet, none of
which appear to apply completely to
my SUV. It is a bummer when you get
the car on the stands and then
everything looks just a little bit
different from what you've seen, so
then you have to figure out how to
do it by yourself, not knowing
nuttin' about heavy duty front end
disk brakes. I've got to go back to
the video and see if perhaps that
wasn't a four wheel drive.
Umm, this
picture I rather liked - I was
trying to shoot the recent eclipse /
blood moon, forgot it had gotten
cold at night, so my lens assembly
couldn't get it together, as I
didn't go outside until the thing
was well and truly started. I then
took the 300mm and my doubler out
into the sunny afternoon, to see if
I could still do cool stuff with it,
and that's when I shot this flower,
against the light, in macro setting.
The picture is rather large, so if
it loads slowly, don't be surprised.
As always, you can click on it to
get the full size view, depending on
your browser. So I think I am OK,
just need to use my brain and pay
attention. OK. Back to AI..
Well, it does
say "don't try this at home", or
words to that effect.. when I tried
taking my blood pressure
medication at night, just
for a couple of days, that
immediately led to heart
palpitations in the evening. Before
you think the two are related, I
also take a thyroid hormone, and it
is that hormone that has caused
palpitations in the past, until we
got the dosage right. So there may
well be an interaction between the
two, or even an interaction with a
statin, and I find the palpitations
uncomfortable. I absolutely know I
have a heart, but I do not need to
be reminded of it - I remember,
after my thyroid surgery, waking up
from the boom-boom in my chest,
being too scared to go back to
sleep. Having, at the same time,
stopped smoking cold turkey, after
40 years, didn't help either,
probably... *grin*
So: if you're
looking for a good optometrist who
specializes in contact lenses,
takes his time, doesn't charge the
Earth, is prepared to be creative
with your insurance plans, and
you're in the Seattle area, try Tony Pool, O.D..
He is convenient to downtown, in
that his office is half a mile from
the Edmonds railway station, which
is served by the Sounder train,
Amtrak, and loads of metro buses,
while his "other office", is at a
Target store in Lake Stevens, WA (I
have to admit I have no idea where
that is...). The Edmonds office not
only has free parking nearby, but
even charging stations - a new one
on me. Dr. Pool is clearly
economical - he has no receptionist,
and his offices are in the basement
of an office building, meaning he
doesn't have to pay for a shop front
or a vapid person answering the
phone. It may not help employment or
the economy, but it sure helps my
wallet. Edmonds, WA, by the way, is
a cool little town, with an
enjoyable waterfront and a cute
downtown.
Since we're on
"health and vision".. Although I
ordered a scale that
purports to measure body fat,
hydration levels, bone mass and
muscle mass, I've been tested for
some of these things for years by
doctors at medical facilities, and
kind of don't expect my bone mass to
be measurable by a scale,
considering doctors measure these
things with tests and equipment
costing thousands and tens of
thousands and hundreds of thousands.
But I can perhaps compare some of
this data with what my
rheumatologist comes up with, using
the clinic's scanner, and see what I
myself can figure. I've now been
working out, using my insurance's
"free" Silver Sneakers
program, since the beginning of the
year, five to six days a week, and
it probably is time to look at
maintaining some kind of
measurement, so I can track my
progress. At the point, a couple of
months ago, when a neighbour noticed
I had lost weight (which probably is
translatable as "body mass", as I am
now putting on weight as muscle
mass), and most of my jeans fall off
my ass, even the 34's I bought
recently, when that started, I guess
I should be happy with progress.
It is cold, or
has been cold, an early
winter. This is the greenhouse, at
7am, frozen solid at 24
degrees. I must have seen this
coming, because I dug the snow
chains and snow boots out of the
garage last week, though the
forecasters all say there won't be
much winter, as we're having El
Niño coming in. Last year, we had
all of two snowflakes, but this
year... At any rate, as I write this
the temperature is back up,
fingers crossed. 
Entrepreneur and billionaire and
Paypal cofounder Peter Thiel
recently wrote an op-ed piece
for the New York Times on power
generation issues, in which he makes
a case for nuclear power.
Of course, as I write this lots of
heads of state are meeting in
Paris (imagine how much money and
time they could have saved if
they and their cohorts and other
attendees could have simply used
Skype) to discuss global warming,
which leads me to begin to
loudly wonder what actual actions
will result from this gathering,
when we can't even agree on better
means to generate energy?
Seriously, if you think we can use
solar power and wind power and
tidal power to power society, you
probably have not really thought
about what will happen to the
environment if we begin converting
heat radiation and wind energy and
tidal forces on a very large
scale to consumable energy, making
significant and irreversible
changes to our environment. There is
no such thing as "renewable
energy", even if we were to
get it directly from the nuclear
processes in our sun it wouldn't be
"renewable". There is no such
thing, peeps, as "renewing" wind
power, "renewing" solar
radiation, and "renewing" tidal
energy. If you slow down the air
flow around the Earth, it isn't
magically going to speed itself
up, afterwards. If you put a solar
panel over your house, your
house gets less energy from the sun.
Same for a solar panel on a
piece of land. Who thought of this
nonsense "science"? Can we take
'em out back and and recycle them? 
The picture has some of the previous
Muslim migrant
streams into the Netherlands - long
time resident of the United
States, I was startled realizing a
significant part of the western
part of Amsterdam is now a Muslim
enclave, complete with women who
aggressively accost you if you're
taking a picture of the local
market with them in it... And this
was 2008, before large parts of
the populations of Syria and
Afghanistan are
arriving. I understand refugees are
currently holding public
protests in towns across the
country, as they feel they don't
have
enough privacy and creature comforts
in their hastily assembled
places of shelter. I understand
homosexual refugees are having to
be housed separately, as the "other"
refugees have attacked snd
hurt them. There are regular fights
in the centers that have to be
policed, between Shiite and Sunni
Muslims. 
I
was lucky enough to come across this
Santa in the middle
of the pre-Xmas shopping frenzy,
although I had to fight off a
bunch of other road users using the
"I'm bigger than you"
technique, to get in position to get
this shot, phone in one hand,
3 ton SUV in the other. It really
does look like the recession is
over, people are spending, long
abandoned houses in the
neighbourhood are being done up and
sold, some razed, lots of new
cars, money is flowing. Gas (here in
the Seattle area) is down to
$1.99 per gallon, in some places
(that's €0.47 per liter, for the
centipedes), that does wonders for
the economy - and is expected
to last. 
While not necessarily an auspicious start to 2016
(best wishes to all, of course, enjoy that New Year smell
while it lasts), neighbour D. and I went and worked out this
morning, like we do most weekdays, and the odd Saturday or
Sunday (for me). Gratifyingly, D. approached me, earlier in
the year, as he and neighbour G. had noticed my losing weight,
from when I took up the Silver Sneakers program, and began
going to the gym, last January, and it turned out his "hurdle"
was that he didn't really know how to work out in a gym. This
is a tough one for some - gyms, especially in the suburbs, are
a bit foreboding large places with lots of machines, vapid
receptionists, and over-constructed folks who seem to enjoy
maxing themselves out. So it was nice to be asked, and as I am
older, have a couple of existing conditions, doctors I can ask
questions about working out, and have been trained in safe
physical therapy back in Europe years ago, I was able to help
D. get a workout regime started that does not strain
his body, and gives him all the benefits of aging healthily.
Probably one of the riskiest aspects of going to the gym is
injury - easy to avoid, but almost easier to inflict on
yourself. As my rheumatologist commented when I told him I'd
be joining a gym "don't do classes, for now, they make you
compete and you will hurt yourself". Competing is in the
nature of the beast, for most, and class instructors don't
really have a way to track every member of their training
class. 
Running out of space on my 2 terabyte
backup disk, I had little option but to buy a larger disk.
This isn't as easy as it sounds - my laptops all have a terabyte
drive installed, I have two active 750 GB and one 2 terabyte
drives that I back up to, and another 1.5 GB of archives.
Backing up is good practice anyway, this just means more of
it. The primary issue with backups is that you end up relying
on them working, and I have, from my lab days, the experience
that backups are often not accessible when you need them. They
sit there, on a disk, and deteriorate over time. I can give
you a long story why this is so, but for now, just take my
word for it. As my drives are all down to 100 or 200 MB of
spare room, it was time to consider getting a bigger backup
drive, and the only drives I could find that were big enough
but affordable were NAS (Network Attached Storage)
devices. After buying an older "but new" model Seagate NAS
drive I found the vendor cheated, sent a broken device with
broken seal out as new, and of course, it did not work. (I did
eventually get it working, read my review at Amazon for that saga), but had
to spend more money and get the Western Digital 4TB My Cloud Personal NAS
. I am not
going to be using it to stream video over my home network, so
in terms of being able to use it for NTFS file services (a
UNIX concept that lets you mount drives as file systems) one NAS
drive should be as good as the other. If you're
wondering why I am not going to use this to stream video, I do
that from one laptop to the other already, and Windows' Media
Center does not like storing on what Windows thinks are
removable drives. Apart from that, video files can build up in
size very quickly, and I would rather not have them sit on a
device that has "essential" backups, as well. I've actually
noticed this, to my detriment, fairly recently - on the laptop
on which I watch television, I found the TotalMedia app stores
temp files, and does not clean them up when you shut down the
application, and I found that it had stored some 900 gigabytes
(I kid you not) of video temp files on the hard disk in that
laptop. That's major - right now, I am seeing some 12.2 GB of
video files from just four days of watching stored - and
that's just US HD ATSC, recorded in MPEG format, not the
British IPTV I watch as well. 
While the picture in my previous blog post shows a Samsung
Galaxy handset, the astute reader will have noticed that that
isn't what most of the post is about. I decided, though I had
pictures of both the Seagate NAS and the Western Digital NAS
(network drive) I talked about, that they really weren't that
exciting to look at - though I must admit that Western Digital
has done a terrific job of giving their storage devices a
uniform look, now persisting for years already. It is
distinctive, and I get the impression they may have
copyrighted the "book look" to the point nobody else can use
it. Good show, nice equipment, and I am more impressed with
their soft- and firmware than with Seagate's. I do have more
Seagate than WD drives, but that is, mostly, due to the
Seagate price point, they're always a bit cheaper than any of
the other major manufacturers - possibly with the exception of
small laptop drives, where I have found Hitachi (now owned by,
you guessed it, Western Digital), to be cheaper, and very very
reliable - let's see, the first terabyte Hitachi (2.5 inch
Travelstar) I bought has been running since June 2012, inside
a Lenovo laptop, 24/7/365, and I since put one in a Toshiba
laptop, as well. I do maintain those laptops - they
periodically have their covers removed, and are vacuumed and
cleaned with compressed air. Overheating, dust and debris, are
the most common causes of computer failure, as the vast
majority of laptops and desktops have no filters, and will
eventually accumulate enough dust (and for smokers, gunk) to
start slowing down and then die. If you hear your computer's
fan run fast, periodically, fine, but if it does that a lot,
you need to clean its innards, before it cleans your wallet. 
Spring came early in the Puget Sound,
with snow storms pummeling th'other coast, I am thinking it is
time to wash the car. In the driveway... 
This, then, is the recently
updated combination dashcam / engine monitor /
vehicle tracker / vehicle locator / WiFi Hotspot
for a lot less money than buying a Chevrolet Cruze, or
some such, where I think you'd need to get an Ontrack
subscription as well. Ontrack starts at $20 per month,
but for that you don't get tracking or Hotspot or
anything useful, unless you're planning to have an
accident every month. It does allow General Motors and
AT&T to know where you are, and how you're
driving, 24/7/365. I think you need to spend a bit
more money to get the useful bells and whistles,
though not half as much as your cellular subscription
gives you. My extra T-Mobile line for this $75 dollar
Samsung handset with its one time $20 monitoring
software costs me $5 a month. The OBDII (vehicle
diagnostic port) dongle that lets the Samsung talk to
my Dodge cost another $20. 
Reading a recent Telegraph
article about BBC news anchor George Alagiah and his battle
with cancer reminded me of my own, although I
tend to not refer to being ill as a "battle" - battles
you can win, illness is something you, with your
doctors, try to manage. Cancer, in particular, doesn't
"go away", you don't really get "cured", once you've
had it it stays, if all is well, always there, in the
back of your mind. 
had an
unexpected boon to it - because I no longer need to
back up to the 2TB drive I was using both as a file
archive and a backup drive (the combined purpose
overfilled it), I thought I'd take a look at changing
that over to Bitlocker encryption. I had
experimented with Bitlocker earlier, but as
one of my systems was running Windows 7, I couldn't
encrypt on that, although Windows 7 Professional,
paradoxically, will read encrypted drives. And
Bitlocker encryption and Windows Backup don't like
each other either, so it was only now that I could see
if I can use an encrypted disk both on a Windows 8.1
and a Windows 10 system. It took almost a day to
encrypt the entire disk, but it works fine, on both
systems, including when using the eSATA-to-USB3 conversion cable.
I was never comfortable having a disk with a plain
readable file archive - I can understand you may think
I am a bit security anal, but I do have some archives
that contain national security information, and it is
a lot easier to encrypt your backups than to try and
weed out what is and isn't "sensitive". I recall well
the first time I had to go to China, and realized
there were, by virtue of my being in charge of a
significant number of Federal Government data
circuits, quite a few workfiles that I carry with me
24/7/365, but now could not. This is more of an issue
than you may think - I and some of my colleagues
weren't allowed back into Manhattan for a week or so,
after 9/11, due to the risk of another attack, and if
I had not, at that time, had my network maps on my
laptop with me, recovery work, especially on Wall
Street, would have been severely impaired - had I not
carried my databases, the NYSE would not have been
back online on September 17, 6 days after the attacks.
We all carried, by that time, all of our vital
information on laptops in Lotus Notes databases,
properly secured and passworded, of course, which is
how the phone company was able to have senior managers
manage multiple locales - laptops, airplanes and late
nights. All I am saying is that it has become second
nature for me to secure my data, and that is in the
day and age of exploding cybercrime a good skill to
have, and a good thing to do. 
So no, if you think I led you
down the garden path, last blog, if you smoke you have
a statistically increased risk of getting cancer,
this is without doubt. But you can get exactly the
same cancer if you do not smoke, which
scientifically means the cancer is not caused by the
smoke, or the smoking. It is, at best, aggravated.
Then again, former colleague science journalist Jan
van Erp used to say "life causes cancer". On the one
hand, scorched hamburgers contain more carcinogen than
do non-scorched hamburgers, on the other hand, the
human organism has a plethora of defenses against
carcinogens. Possibly fewer where the carcinogens are
relatively new - we've only been barbequeuing since
1768 or so, before that preparing meat over hot coals
was more akin to slow cooking, at some point someone
noticed that heated food spoiled more slowly, and HP
sauce was invented to mask the taste of decay. We seem
to forget perfume was invented because people thought
washing with water caused disease (depending on where
the water came from, back then, that's not at all
impossible), so they stunk, and foods were served with
onions or vinegar or pepper because that masked the
smell and taste of decay in a day and age when
refrigeration had been forgotten, previously only used
by Romans, when they lived close enough to mountain
ranges that they could use slaves to bring down large
amounts of ice and snow to fill large concrete
cisterns with (the Romans conveniently invented
concrete, which is why we can still visit humongous
Roman aqueducts in Southern France). At the same time
as running clean water and closed sewers, cleanliness
and hygiene became a lost art right through the middle
ages. Fermented beverages containing alcohol, beer,
used to be a safer alternative to natural drinking
water from streams people used to wash their bottoms
in. None of this is in the remote past. It is
the human paradox - some people reuse paper towels,
blissfully unaware that improvements in health are
partly due to our ability to use disposable cleaning
materials and strong chemicals - the strongest acid
the Romans had was vinegar, the product of the
fermentation of wine. 
Startling, to see a woman
police officer, in Belgium, telling people in the
international departure area at Brussels Zaventem
Airport, with gun drawn, to leave the terminal. She
did not just walk over, she was there for the whole
thing, and if this and other images broadcast live fom
Brussels in recent days are anything to go by, Belgium
is no longer the pleasant, quiet backwater it has
always been for me. Some of the best restaurants on
the planet are in Brussels. And I would always delight
in taking extra time to return my rental car to
Zaventem, because there are some really nice cafés
serving wonderful Belgian draft beer in the villages
that surround the airport. "Nog een pintje, menier?" 
A recent article in the New York Times discusses
Artificial Intelligence, but not, I fear, in a
particularly meaningful way. Read this quote: "The
A.I. resources Ms. Greene is opening up at Google
are remarkable. Google’s autocomplete feature that
most of us use when doing a search can
instantaneously touch 500 computers in several
locations as it guesses what we are looking for.".
Diane B. Greene is the head of Google Compute Engine,
who seems to believe that what I just quoted describes
AI. Sorry, Ms. Greene, that has nothing to do with intelligence,
artificial or otherwise. Building the systems, and
making them work, certainly does, but what a very
large computer system connected to lots of places
collecting data does is not intelligence. Intelligence
does not have data as a prerequisite. What you
describe is advanced computing. The way Google and
Microsoft and others try to tell us "intelligence"
works is that you log into their system, where they
have gathered as much data on and from you as they
can, they now try and get more data, from your
location and your network to your computing device and
those around you, with all that data they now read
what you're asking, and then they try and come up with
an response based on all of the information they have.
The clue is in Ms. Greene's use of the word
"guessing". Intelligence is nothing to do with
guessing. Guessing is what you do when you do not have
enough information. Intelligence is what you use when
you try to understand something. There is a chasm, a
vast difference, between the two. Perhaps we need to
start talking to the folks at Google and Microsoft and
re-teach them what exactly intelligence is, and what
it does. The recent Microsoft debacle, presenting the
Tay bot, is probably the best
example of how we neither understand nor are able to
create AI. There is, with the resources and manpower
this company has, absolutely no excuse to activate a
malfunctioning bot, but then making things worse by
not having a live team of troubleshooters online, and
taking down a system just when you can be learning how
it really works is unforgivable. The Head of Research
should have been instantly taken out back and shot.
There admittedly isn't a real "out back" on the
Microsoft campus here, but I am sure they could have
dealt with the failing executive in some other clever
manner. Then again, that might have required
intelligence... I then decided to test that on
the laptop interface, re-installed the ethernet
drivers, and sure enough, it came up, at first
intermittently, at a gigabit too. Some changes in the
networks setup, and it runs at that gigabit all the
time, and do file transfers from the laptop at some
44Kb/second, which is a lot better than 11 Kbits... If
it confuses you I didn't use the fast Ethernet, much
of my network traffic goes to the internet,
and my home internet runs at 30 Mb/sec, so there was
little need to set up something faster than 802.11n,
my wireless speed. But with the NAS drive, which I
only got at the beginning of the year, that equation
changed - the drives, today, have Gigabit ethernet
ports, the routers do, and so having my "main machine"
connected at a Gigabit, using hardwired Ethernet,
makes sense. Apart from that, having my data drive,
and my main backup drive, not accessible via WiFi
provides some extra security, sitting, as they do,
behind a double firewall. 
Actually, when the British
decided they wanted no part of the Euro, we
could have all come to the conclusion it would come to
this. Not team players, as we say in the Anglo-Saxon
world. Yes, they wanted the EU, but not really. This
is what you get with island people, who are used to
having things their own way, because they have to. It
is hard to explain unless you've done it, but if you
can drive to a border and cross it, you're much more
connected than when you have to cross a bit of water.
You've got neighbours, you can borrow a cup of sugar,
and if you have to get in a boat and learn a different
langue to do that, it's just not the same. Travelers
had an interesting joke about England - when you flew
from America to Ireland, you got to Europe. Then when
you flew to England, you were back in the United
States. And if you've lived in these places, you'll
agree that it is true. It's the Brits' own fault -
they never lost Empire aspirations, understandable,
and never tried to integrate, even once the Chunnel
was dug. I don't know what it is, you can't just put
French language signs into St. Pancras and think
you've done your filial duties. And speaking English,
a Really Important Language, fluently, does not help.
I had previously
updated the Vaio from Windows Vista to Windows 7, with
an upgrade to 7 Pro, but when I tried to go from there
to Windows 8 I found I lost access to the DVD drive.
I'd never found a way to sort that out, and as I was
only using the Vaio to watch TV, using an HDTV dongle
and Windows Media Center, it didn't much matter, and I
had backed out to Windows 7 Pro. Of course, as soon as
I resurrected the machine and reloaded Windows 8, the
DVD drive disappeared again, and stayed absent under
Windows 10. So I loaded Windows 7 back in, and spent
more than a day doing research on the internet, until
I found a solution I hadn't seen before, at a website
run from India by Vishal Gupta, listed as askvg.com,
the VG being Vishal's initials. And sure enough, I
learned something, and it got fixed - little did I
know you can actually see hidden (that is, loaded but
not active) device drivers in the Windows Device
Manager, and you can delete the drivers that don't
work or do not need to be there, then run a refresh,
or, as I did, power down the machine, and restart it.
Sure enough, it recreated the drivers, and this time,
the DVD driver worked, and stayed working when I
updated the operating system. Magic. And so I was able
to fully load Windows 10 Pro, which I did from a DVD
that Microsoft makes available if you don't want to
run the update online. I had to do that now, Microsoft
insists the free upgrade to Windows 10 (only
from Windows 7 or 8/8.1) stops on July 29, and much to
my surprise it loaded without complaints on the Vaio,
which was built for Windows Vista, I didn't really
expect Windows 10 to load without tweaking, as I'd had
to do with Windows 7 and 8. But no complaints, no
tweaking necessary, everything loaded in one fell
swoop. Even my avoidance of using or creating a
Microsoft email address for logging in didn't cause a
hiccup, other than that some of Microsoft's apps won't
work without one, but that's fine. I was (this being a
"Pro" install, I had paid for that upgrade a while
ago) even able to create a full operating system image
backup, which only took three DVDs (Microsoft uses its
own compression algorithm to back up to DVD, which
roughly doubles the standard capacity of a disk). So
all good... The hard drive is a bit noisy, so while I
was at it I decided to replace that with a new
terabyte drive, might as well give the old girl what
new life I can, the bigger the drive, the faster
she'll run (that goes for all Windows installs, by the
way, provided you set the machine up to regularly
optimize the drive, I let it do that every night on
all of my PCs). 
Of course, then my system
changeover plans don't work, still trying to figure
out why not... I intended to do a full live backup of
the Lenovo laptop, which I had been backing up
to an external Seagate SATA drive, and overnight it
just wouldn't "do it". By morning I saw it had
reported a drive error, but didn't know whether it was
the source or destination drive, and it took me much
of today to get it working again. I removed the
antivirus stuff, and while I was out shopping set it
to do a full chkdsk - which takes time, there is some
600GB of data on the terabyte drive. No errors in any
reports, but as of an hour ago, I was able to start a
backup that didn't fail, so perhaps tomorrow I can do
that for real. 
Replacing the Lenovo's
drive with a larger one has turned into a huge hassle.
As I write this, I am running a backup from the cloned
copy of my main hard disk, a clone I had to do twice
before it "took". Let me explain - it is kind of
important, because hard disks do break down, and once
one does, you have only a small window of opportunity
to rescue your "load". I did have a couple of full
backups, but stupidly, I deleted the Windows 8.1 image
I had, as when I tried to update that, Windows Image
Backup reported errors, and that meant my existing
image could have been compromised. The disk has some
600GB of data, much of my active archives, email etc.,
and what I wanted to do was clone it so I did not have
to install a new version of Windows on my new (2
terabyte, where the original was 1 terabyte) drive,
then restore the backup to that. 
I don't really have a good
handle on what is wrong with the 1TB 2.5 inch Hitachi
Travelstar I've been replacing, and writing
about, because while some runs of Microsoft's CHKDSK
show bad clusters, and report no spare clusters are
available, another run of the same software using a
different version of Windows reports cluster
replacement. While I could no longer boot from that
drive, after the latest CHKDSK run I was again able
to, so it looks like Windows 10's disk tools
do better than the tools in Windows 8.1. I downloaded
a disk management utility from the HGST website
(Hitachi became HGST and then was aquired by Western
Digital), and that does not report disk failure in its
SMART test, so I am now going to run a low level erase
on the disk, and will then run an extended test, then
a low level format from Windows, and then another
CHKDSK. If this confuses you, all disks come with bad
sectors, which are, these days, mapped out by the
drive firmware, the preloaded factory management
software, and drives will move the data from new bad
sectors to the spare sectors every disk comes with.
Once it runs out of spare sectors, which my drive
reported earlier, the drive is ready to be retired.
But now, using a different operating system and a
different drive interface, it reported it had found bad
sectors, and moved the data to good sectors. So
it would seem it is developing bad sectors as it runs,
and that is no good. The reason I put a question mark
to this is that the disk is three years old, and
should not be failing that soon. 
I've sent the failing HGST disk
off to its maker, and all I need to do now is test the
other HGST terabyte drive I have, which lives in my
Toshiba laptop. I have today re-installed the OS on
that, since the free update to Windows 10 is still
available, and backed it up, so I guess a CHKDSK and
scrub test are next, just to make sure the drive
problems with the Lenovo were just occasional,
and not a whole bad series of devices. Losing a
terabyte can be devastating, I got lucky hearing the
disk beginning to fail, and understanding how to
recover and get the data off. I must say that the new
2TB drive I put in the Lenovo, at
the very reasonable sum of $106.48, has been a
revelation, so far. While I have not tested it - you
can really only test hard disks over time, and with
fairly destructive tools - the unit, made by Seagate
for Samsung, is running very smoothly. It is
completely noiseless - thinking about it, I do not
recall ever having a hard disk in a computer that I
couldn't hear at all. While I was frequently able to
hear the Lenovo laptop, late at night, now I am not
hearing a thing. When the Lenovo was recording
HDTV using the AverTV dongle attached to it, I
would sometimes hear the hard disk making fairly
frantic head movement noises, while the CPU got hot
enough to kick the cooling fan into a higher speed. I
always thought the CPU load was due to the dongle's
processor requirements, but now I am not so sure - the
new drive runs at 5400 rpm, rather than the 7200 the
Travelstar ran at, and as both are 2.5 inch diameter
drives, head movement in the new drive, at double
the storage on the same platter size, may well
be less. So it is possible that the new drive runs far
less hot, and the total load just never gets to the
point where the system gets (too?) hot. I realize this
is somewhat of an "iffy" recommendation, as I can't
yet prove this Samsung/Seagate product is so much
"better", but you will hopefully accept I am a system
engineer with some 40+ years of experience in
tinkering with computer systems, and I did correctly
surmise that the previous disk in this laptop was
failing. Correctly, in that not only my own
diagnostics said so, but HGST is now replacing the
drive under warranty, it is almost three years old.
They don't do that unless it is really broken. 
In the meantime, I had been
looking for a new PC, one that has more oomph and can
handle more memory (RAM) than my Lenovo can,
and found that the vast majority of laptops I can
afford suffer from the marketing syndrome - anemic
processors, little memory, but they have a touch
screen, some are two-in-one devices, where you can
detach the keyboard and use them as tablets. Perhaps I
am old style, by now, but a tablet is a tablet, I do
own one, and I just can't do advanced computing stuff
on a bloody touchscreen without memory. I know, I can
hook one of my Bluetooth keyboards up to the tablet,
but that still doesn't give me a large high resolution
screen and, well, stuff. Cloud? That's the solution
for working with anemic laptops, but you have to pay
for cloud stuff, and then your data is never entirely
secure, and accessing your stuff from rural Thailand
is a pain. I recall sometimes being unable, in Chon
Buri, to pay my mobile bill, order medication, or
access my bank account - in many places because cookie
traffic from Thailand to the United States and back to
Thailand, and vice versa, can be so delayed it hangs
the browser, while in some cases vendors stop you
accessing their secure sites because you look like a
hacker, considering where you are and what data you're
accessing. So in many cases, I run my stuff locally,
and in a server park that I lease bandwidth on. 
The shot to the left shows the
Magnolia Bridge, downtown, and beyond that Port of
Seattle Pier 91, where I picked up my
landlord and his family after their Holland America Alaska
cruise, the other day. Alaska is kind of the
"next stop up" from here, Canada begins maybe an hour
up the road, and sail or drive long enough, and you're
back in the United States, and the State of Alaska.
Never made it up there, it is quite a trek and the
winters, obviously, are a bit fierce, almost drove up
there a couple of years ago, when I realized just the
cost of the gas is horrendous, and then if you want to
take your guns and hunt, the amount of paperwork the
Canadians want just for transit is just ridiculous.
There are ferrys, but they're not cheap either.. 
While I have at least got the HP
Elitebook up and running smoothly, I am not sure about
the rest of my systems, like the Toshiba in the
picture here. As far as the HP is concerned, I spent
close to a week figuring out how the settings worked,
experimenting with Windows 7 Pro so I could see the
effects (HP put enough options in this series of business
laptops to think you're on a multiprocessor
server), then received a replacement with a working
charging circuit, and as you read this I have managed
to patch in all HP drivers for Windows 8.1, including
the ones for features I don't really need, and I've
even managed to turn on the UEFI boot facility in the
BIOS, thanks, partly, to the EFI boot core built into
Windows 8, I even managed to turn on boot protection
in the system, something it insists can't be done. I
just like it when things work. I did, along the way,
make some discoveries about things that don't work,
and found out you can actually easily retrofit USB 3.0
ports on older systems. That's majorly nice, because
rather than the one 5 GB/s eSATA port, I now have two
6 GB/s USB ports, as well (tested, they really do
work). 
I should probably explain that I
never link my Windows installation to any kind of
email address, Microsoft or otherwise, because doing
so allows Microsoft to collect personal data from your
system. That was bad in 8/8.1, in Windows 10 it is a
disaster, as it is hard-to-impossible to turn off, and
every time Microsoft provides a major update, it turns
half the stuff you have painstakingly turned off back
on. And after I found a blog explaining how you could
link your MS Mail address to Windows 10 to facilitate
a computer move, I followed the instructions and then
the promised inclusion of the email address in the activation
screen simply never happened. Until today, that
is - two days later, and after I cloned the system's
hard disk to the SSD I took out of my new HP (the SSD
is fast but only 160GB, and I wanted a 2TB in the HP).
Suddenly, Microsoft ran an update that easily took
half an hour, and then changed the activation. The
update installed a bunch of crap I hadn't asked for,
as well, and I now need to find out what it installed,
where it is, and how to get rid of it, which is
beginning to be a pain. 
I lived and worked in England
for many years, beginning back when the UK made
overtures to join the EU, and eventually did.
When I first came to the UK, it had a rich "upper
class" - terminology that Virgin Atlantic took from
the real world - but I was aghast at the poverty in
what I had thought was a Western European country.
People had electricity meters you had to put coins in,
there were small packages of food in supermarkets,
designed especially for the poor and for old age
pensioners, who couldn't afford to buy whole entire
pints of milk, and an elderly couple came into the pub
I worked at, in Earl's Court, to share one bottle of
Guinness, once a week, it was all they could afford.
Elderly folk froze to death every winter, as they
couldn't afford to heat their homes - coal was cheap,
but as coal was phased out the elderly couldn't afford
to switch to electrical or gas heat, which were
expensive. We received Luncheon Vouchers, at
work, the typical sandwich you could get for that was
a cucumber sandwich, typically two quarter slices of
white bread with butter and slices of cucumber. Coming
from The Netherlands, I sometimes got the feeling I
had arrived in the Third World - we expats, in fact,
had a joke to that effect: Britain would be the first
country in the West to achieve Third World status. By
the time I moved to the United States, in 1985,
Britain was in the European Union, and wealth
had improved significantly. I haven't got a clue why
the British populace decided it wanted to leave the
EU, but the more I look at China, the more I wonder if
the West's reliance on democratic institutions isn't
leading to, shall we say, "unexpected results".... 
Fitness trackers have been
proven to provide very unreliable results - a device
strapped on your arm can't accurately read your vital
signs, especially when you are working out,
sweating, and your temperature is elevated - and
there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all human
being, every physique is different. I've seen several
science programs recently, medically moderated, on
British television, where fitness trackers, biometric
weight scales, calory counting apps, and similar
health aids have been shown to provide unreliable
results. It was kind of funny to get researchers to
hit the track wearing six different fitness trackers,
and get six wildly diverging results, as some British
doctors did. I've tested this myself with a commercial
biometric scale, whose readings are as far away from a
Dexa scan, the be-all and
end-all of non-invasive tissue and bone analysis,
as you can imagine - at which point, interestingly, my
rheumatologist cautioned me to have all Dexa scans
done on the same machine, as even Dexa scans using
different $60,000 scanners have divergent readings.
These are $60,000 machines operated by specialized
trained medical personnel in hospitals that have
trouble reading accurately. Who knew... So a simple
wrist band can't read your skin temperature
continuously accurately, let alone anything else. I
have, under doctor's orders, been monitoring my vital
signs for many years, more so after I developed
cancer, and I maintain a spreadsheet going back years,
partly simply out of curiousity. And as that means I
have a record of change (and non-change) correlated
with the medication I take, and my level of exercise,
I can safely tell you that if a medication change does
not show up in my averages until at least a week
later, and sometimes never, there isn't a thing you do
in a 24 hour period that a "tracker" can see the
effect of. If you do see a sudden change, you probably
ate some bad fish, but it isn't due to your
workout. I often compare these things to the
specialized drinks and nutrients avid sporters take,
as if a protein in a water bottle knows how to get to
whatever muscle you're working on that day. Nutrients
are things your metabolism takes care of, distributes
and directs, not you. So much hype, so from that
perspective, the conclusion in the research that
fitness trackers alter users' behaviour, and create a
false sense of security, may well be right. If you
have a tracker that tells you about differences in
your biometrics compared with the same month last
year, that's great, but chances are you don't. 
Well, what do you know, these
HP Elitebooks fit in my safe! I have one of those Sentry Safes, small, luggable,
fireproof (up to 1,700° F), with a
mechanical/electro-magnetic combo lock. It isn't so
much that I am afraid of being burgled (although there
is always that concern, I've not been burgled since
living in London, although someone tried in Valhalla,
NY, after my gear came back from an overseas posting
in a removal truck), but one never knows. An important
aspect is the fireproofing, making sure important
documents are safe, and now I can keep my backup
laptop in the safe too, I realized my Elitebooks are
built to comply with United States Military Standard
MIL-STD-810. That's dandy, although now I have to
figure out if I should keep a copy of my importand
data on there - that's a lot of work. I am already
bonkers with the backing up, although true backing up
I only do with systems containing data, but I do worry
about the stuff on the NAS drive, which, at 4TB, I
don't have the disks to easily back up. As I was digging up the manuals
for these HP systems, and reading up on them, I
realized they are built to comply with United States
Military Standard MIL-STD-810. That came as a
surprise, but explained their sturdy build, and the
ease of service - where any laptop I've ever worked on
has had to have panels unscrewed and hatches opened to
get to where you install memory and replace hard
disks, not so with the Elitebooks. Slide a catch, and
the entire bottom panel slides down and off, and you
can get at just about anything inside - amazing,
considering these Elitebooks are a little more than
half the size of a "normal" 14" laptop. Not only that,
if you spill a drink in your keyboard it'll drain out
through a hole in the bottom, and the air intake vents
are both in the front and in the bottom of the plate,
so if you put this thing on a soft surface it can
still ingest cooling air (which, with fast hot
processors, it does need in gobs). 
A neighbour's house in the late
afternoon sun, I just thought it looked pretty. At the
end of summer, quite a few folks in the neighbourhood
repainted or reroofed - some both. One neighbour's
work crew found a split beam in the garage,
caused by a mistake made by the original builder, and
that led to everybody checking their rafters, as that
builder had apparently built more than half the houses
on the block. It isn't something you notice easily -
in this case, a roofer repairing storm damage noticed
the garage roof having a slight misalignment. That
soon got more expensive, apart from jacking up and
realigning the beam, gutters were now misaligned, etc.
Anyway, repairs were done, the house in the picture
(different neighbour) was reroofed and repainted, and
doesn't it look pretty and American... 
I am not going to
whine at you, not too much, anyway, today but allow me
to, yet again, caution you that large hard disks, if
you use them the way they are intended, can cause
truly bad stuff to your data - and large hard disks
installed in anemic laptops are now a sales argument,
otherwise useless PCs come with a terabyte drive,
since those probably cost under $30, wholesale. We'll
assume you have the means to reinstall your software,
but data lost, can mean forever. If you downloaded the
software you bought, and it sits on the same big hard
drive it is installed on, guess what... This is one
reason I try and buy software on DVD - yes,
once you install that it is going to go and download a
new version, but it does give you a place to start.
Software you bought years ago may not always be
re-installable, even if you did keep the registration.
Tied to that AT&T email address you no longer have
access to? Tough cookies... 
I can't tell you how annoying
it is to have a couple of long term medical conditions
at the same time as you age. I mean, I know we all
age, but beyond a certain point you get some "aging
ailments", or whatever you call that stuff, but when
you have medical things going on at the same time, and
take powerful medication for them, it becomes hard to
figure out what's what. Heart condition is one, in my
case. I don't know that I have one, but the thyroid
hormone I take to alleviate the effect of having had
my thyroid removed has side effects you wouldn't think
of. Some you discover over time, and they are hard to
diagnose, very hard - after all, you're your own first
line doctor, as far as that is concerned. A couple of
years ago, it bothered me to the point I went and had
a full cardio workup, wearing a monitor for a
week, but no, there was nothing wrong. It just makes
me wonder if there isn't a better way to administer
these hormones. After all, the body's needs change all
the time, and having a singe blood test done every few
months, a sort of snapshot, isn't a very effective way
of managing that. There isn't an on-the-fly test for
these hormones, so an automated pump, like is used for
some other ailments, is probably out of the question,
unless we create a new type of test. Even for
diabetics, I see from Google, automation is being
worked on, but still far away, as an everyday
solution. It is nice they do so much work on robotics,
but I get the impression that, beyond the pacemaker,
there isn't actually a lot that is working (and
affordable). I have to wonder if we couldn't go back
to "proper academia" and develop stuff paid for out of
taxes and subsidies and available to all, including
all those folks who currently don't even know they
need medication, as they don't have enough insurance
coverage to go and see a doctor when they need to.
Which reminds me, I have my annual insurance renewal
coming, dying to see what surprises are in store this
year. Mind you, I am one of the lucky ones, Medicare
paid up and my retiree supplemental insurance covers a
large portion of everything I need. When I saw my
Humira now costs some $11,500 for a 12 week supply
(that's what the insurance plan pays, not my copay,
I'd be toast).... When I first started on biologics,
some 17 years ago, I think the cost was around $3,000
for a 90 day supply, that was a different medication,
two shots a week, I remember well that after the nurse
at my doctor's office showed me how to prepare and
administer the injection, I drove out of the hospital
parking and spent a whole evening pain free, first
time in years. So if you've followed the noise about
the cost of Epipens, and other drugs, yes, the
cost of drugs is going up way faster than the cost of
living, and I've not seen a real explanation.
On a different note, I came
across pictures I shot in Thailand, a couple of years
ago, when I spent three months there, housesitting for
a friend, while he was working abroad. At the time, I
barely blogged about it, for a variety of reasons,
some to do with his work, some to do with his divorce,
there is so much data that could harm someone if it
ends up on the internet, so I decided to 'write it
later". Never got around to that, though, and since it
entailed three months in a fascinating country, and
pretty much a discovery trip on my part, and he has
since moved and sorted stuff out, I think it is time I
catch up on that. I was actually there for the move,
helped and all that, and helped set up the wonderful
new house he now lives in (and taught his four year
old to swim, since it has a pool). So I'll check where
all the pics live, and you have that coming, promise..
Having said that,
despite trepidations I managed to part-demolish the
steering column in my Durango, pull out the ignition lock cylinder, and
replace it. This was more of a hassle than it sounds -
I had left it way too long from when it became
intermittently hard to turn, and that slowly got
worse. I'd actually bought a new cylinder last year,
read the installation instructions, and I guess I kind
of decided this was hard enough that a bit of
procrastination was in order. So, last week, it began
to misbehave again, I went back to the Youtube
instructions, realized that if I recoded the new lock
with the old tumbler sequence (but not the old
tumblers) I could continue to use the old keys, and
finally had a go. You see, the electronic lock
(activated by the chip in the key) is separate from
the mechanical lock, so if I could simply get the
tumbler sequence right, I'd be in business. Long story
short - it was high time, several tumblers wouldn't
come out of the old cylinder, and if you can't get
them out you can't read their numbers, then insert new
tumblers with the same numbers in the new cylinder. I
ended up having to half demolish the old cylinder,
force some of the tumblers out, and then found that
half of them were worn to the point that their numbers
were nigh on illegible. Get the numbers wrong, you
can't use the old keys, and the new keys didn't have
chips (even if they'd been "so equipped", you need the
two original keys to program a spare, something I did
not know until after I'd lost one original key).
Anyway, I somehow, carefully, managed, the new lock
cylinder is in, and all is well. Phew.
While I have no idea whether I
was suffering from insomnia or something
else, I do know I have more restful sleep. Because my
prescription medication has changed as well, in those
seven months, I can't tell you the melatonin did it,
and from the research I am seeing it being used for
much shorter periods of time, like up to three months.
That may not mean anything, though, the melatonin
tablets may be retraining my endocrine system. I'll
talk to my doctors again, especially my
endocrinologist, and will report back to you. I see
crazy melatonin dosages on the shelves at Walmart,
though, from what I've read I'd say to try the lowest
dosage, and perhaps up that a bit if you don't notice
anything much after two months. What I know from these
hormones - I take the thyroid hormone, of course,
under doctor's supervision - their adjustments must be
gentle and slow, I get my hormonal dosage changes
tested after three months, at the earliest. So it is
likely other artificial hormones work the same way.
Increasingly, though, researchers are beginning to
discover the stuff they stick in pills doesn't work
the same way the stuff from your food (or glands)
does. If you've not read it, calcium supplements have
been found to cause arterial deposits, rather than be
absorbed by the body and removed if not needed. It is
not yet clear what causes this, but it is clear that
at least some of the compounds don't do what they're
supposed to do. This makes sense - I've always
maintained that the way the body works seems too
elaborate to be able to be usurped by bits of chemical
in a bottle or jar, I keep hearing folks in the gym
who insist their potion "goes straight to my arm
muscles" and actually believe that that is possible.
Trust me on this - even if you inject it into your arm
muscles you still can't make them absorb it. Crazy
stuff.
Two things not to do,
or only do very carefully: use throttle body cleaner on the air
intake behind your air filter (I have an aftermarket cold air intake) and give it a
good squirt down the idle and run ports, and the
valve, and your car won't start. Had to crank
it a few times, leave it alone for a few minutes,
crank it again, it then hesitatingly cranked up on
very low revs, I then gingerly stepped on the gas, and
it slowly came back to life. As if that wasn't enough,
I bought some graphite at the same time as I bought
the solvents, squirted that into the new ignition lock
cylinder, and as very little came out of the tube I
gave it a bigger squirt. That got so much graphite
into the slot I couldn't get the key in any more. Had
to use compressed air to clean it out, which got
graphite powder all over the inside of the car and me.
The key did go in, so I learned another lesson.
Vacuumed and blew the entire inside front, and I guess
tomorrow I'll take the steering column shroud off and
blow those innards out, lord knows what graphite in
the wrong places will do. If you've never maintained
cars much, there is a lot to learn when you start
doing it yourself, and it isn't fun as I only have the
one car, so screw it up and you're done for. I've had
dreams of buying a used VW Beetle Turbo Diesel, to run
around in, keep the SUV for when I need it, but I
can't afford two cars.
I am not a
dyed-in-the-wool Republican, I think you need to be
born that way, but having spent half my career in D.C.
working with "them", I think I have a reasonable
understanding of what makes the other side tick. They
won, respect the vote, people. As I said, this is
democracy - maybe more so when you don't like the
outcome. And as we've all seen so much "conjecture" in
recent years, in this election more than ever, we need
to take an urgent walk back from the speculation. It
is getting worse because, especially in social media,
folks now speculate on speculation, someone posts
completely nonsensical information, someone else picks
that up and "reports" on it, someone else embellishes
the report on the report, and it goes on. I saw folks
on Facebook warning each other about rigged voting
machines - in all seriousness, although no voting
machines were ever rigged or broken into (they're
mostly not connected to the internet, or networks in
general) but people believe in absolute fairytales...
I am cold, tired,
for no reason, although - a neighbour thought the
grey skies and the chilling temperatures didn't
make him jump for joy. Temperatures hit freezing -
32 - for the first time this year, yesterday, kind
of out of nowhere, I had woken up to 50 the day
before. And I see cold and snow roaring into the
Midwest, but then that is pretty much the same
every year. Hopefully there will be a bit of sun
next week, I need to change my oil and refuse to
do that in freezing rain. The seasons are
definitely different this year - where my
neighbour had grapes by the gazillion last year,
this year the harvest was meagre. That's a bit how
I feel, although I should be happy some of my
financial woes, dating back to the 2008 stock
market collapse when I lost my house and my
savings, seem to have gone away. It has been a
long hard slog, though, and I can't say I feel
like celebrating. With the cancer and some other
medical issues under control, I really should not
complain. Next week a slew of blood work, then the
annual checkups over the next couple of weeks,
spend the 2016 insurance money while it is there.
My 2017 health plan insurance contribution has
gone up significantly, a bit of a bummer,
considering the past few years it kept coming
down, but there it is, nothing you can do. And if
the preceding paragraph reads a bit gloomy, that
is how I feel, although I probably have gotten
through the worst of it all. Even got a
Thanksgiving invite, so I should not be whining,
but get on with the pumpkin pie.
For many years, I hammered into
my staff's brains that websites must allow as many
people as possible, using as many technologies as
possible, to access information. That wasn't just
because I was in charge of the information the law
required us to make available to the consumer, but I
had a very good understanding that many people use old
computers, old browsers, slow network connections,
non-smartphones, half broken systems, and what have
you. One of my programmers in Chennai, India, once
told me he had broadband internet at his apartment
building - that meant that the 24 apartments in his
building shared one dual channel 128Kb ISDN
connection. Still, today, many cheap mobile telephones
in third world countries only manage EDGE networking,
with speeds up to 500 Kbps. And many of those networks
and devices basically make it hard-to-impossible
for their consumers to access our advanced services.
The picture to the right is the error message I get
from Twitter when I use my Seamonkey browser, one of
five or so different browsers I use. There are some
things I can do more easily with Seamonkey, which is
based on Firefox, than with other browsers, and it has
an email module which I use to store my POPmail on one
of my systems. 
It is pretty much a
security concern, I have better cookie control, and my
email does not get archived in the cloud, where it
isn't secure, once I am done with it. Does it make
sense for Twitter to prevent people from seeing their
video? I have no idea what the video shows, but in
general, alienating users, preventing users from
seeing ads or accessing information, is a completely
useless exercise - most technology in use by consumers
today is "outdated". If the folks at Twitter are
interested: your arrogance, and over-reliance
on advanced technologies, is why you are not doing
well. You've lost your way, kids. It is comparable to
the Fed telling drivers they can't be on an interstate
if their car is older than fifteen years, or, as they
do in Europe, ban older polluting cars from certain
cities, because they forgot pollution goes where the
wind goes, and pollution is dependent on whether, and
how much you drive, not what with.
I always forget to smile
when I take a selfie at the gym, compounded here
because the phone I was using has no front facing
camera. Besides, why post these selfies? Then
again, why not... *grin* 
So let's take another look at
the raw foods I crave - when you read
this, please remember I grew up in The
Netherlands, and there are many things that are
eaten raw (as in: uncooked) in Northern Europe
that horrify most Americans. Matjes herring, by
the way, isn't really raw - while not prepared in
any way, matjes are tradionally caught, gutted on
board ship, and then brined - sodium, the active
ingredient in brine, acts as a preservative when
added to the fresh fish filets, and causes
structural changes in the meat that makes herring
edible right out of the storage vat - that is how
the catch is processed, into small vats, 40
herrings per vat, in brine, no oxygen, no decay.
So, while "raw" herring isn't cooked, it isn't
really raw, either, but the preservation process,
refined over six(!) centuries, and not dependent
on mechanization or refrigeration, very
functional. Having said that, freezing and
refrigeration have contributed to improving the
flavour of herring, which is no longer
increasingly saltier due to the length of time
herring was in its, uh, pickle... In the picture,
left, are my main vices, considering I can't get
real matjes herring here in the Pacific Northwest,
the Scandinavian version they do import is way too
salty for the Dutch palate. Some stores, notably
in California and in the Northeast, do sell it,
but shipping on dry ice isn't necessarily
reliable, and the Eastern European matjes I found
at Costco are salted herring more than matjes
(there's no sea to catch herring in inland Eastern
Europe). But the frozen tuna - tuna almost always
is sold "from frozen" - the distance it has to
travel, and the size of the fish, make it
impractical to ship any other way - is rapidly
becoming my "fish oil alternative". The Fed has it
this tuna has been frozen long and hard enough -
see the rules here - that it is perfectly
safe to consume, provided it is thawed in
accordance with the instructions, which basically
boil down to "defrost in the fridge, then eat
immediately". I do that religiously, letting my
tuna defrost in a closed container wrapped in
kitchen paper, so juices - blood - and freezing
water are absorbed away from the meat. Works a
treat, delicious and, I understand, super healthy.
Here is (see my rant below)
another network that says "you're not compatible"
- Google. That's an issue - you'd think that, with
Google's mother company Alphabet having some
65,000 employees, they could spare a couple to
guarantee compatibility, but no. Google has a
peculiar problem that Microsoft had before -
Google makes it own operating systems and
browsers, so, rather than concentrate on
communicating with you, Google has a ve$ted
interest in getting you to use Android and Chrome
and all that other good stuff. If you're in
advertising, this is actually a massively stupid
idea - your interest is to make sure that anyone,
anywhere, can view and use your output, from
banner ads to Youtube. So think about it - last
blog, I showed you Twitter cannot show ads in some
browsers (by its own choice!). To the right, here,
you can see how Google can't display ads in my
browser - again, by its own choice! And it isn't
that it is not possible, Twitter and Google have
chosen not to show things in browsers they
don't like. Chosen. Like Microsoft in the
past, Google thinks it can do advertising and
operating systems, both (AOL, way back when, did
that too - until someone invented the World Wide
Web and Mosaic and massive AOL and its Keywords went
the way of the dinosaur). It has been proven
time and again that you can't mix the two, in the
long term - and what I don't get is that Google
does not understand you don't need to. Especially
now that Google has been split up into separate
operating companies and is now Alphabet, and they
have throttled back on some of the more esoteric
activities, like self driving cars, you' think
they could take care of their client, the consumer,
first. Being commercially successful by killing
other people's products has never worked in the
long term, while making sure everyone, especially
the lower echelons, can see and use your products,
in the long term, makes you a winner. Advertising
is advertising, and perhaps that can be combined
with making search engines and databases, but it
isn't compatible with operating systems. Before
you tell me I am off my rocker, I am a UNIX
developer by training, and so well familiar with
Android and Chrome and the stuff Apple does,
because all of it is based on ripped versions of
Linux, which itself is based on ripped versions of
UNIX. While UNIX is a brilliant operating system
for network elements, and the folks at MIT did a
great job building a graphical shell around it,
you can, today, take almost any operating system,
and do that, because the latter day processing
units, the CPUs, are so fast and so versatile.
They are in fact so good I am using a laptop with
an Intel I5 processor as my everyday machine,
because I currently don't need the speed the I7,
which I own as well, allows. That's new - even the
I3 in my old Lenovo was, at times, stretched to
the limit, but the more recent Intel chipsets are
blisteringly fast, outputting 4K graphics without
straining themselves, even with Intel's graphics
processors, which aren't the fastest on the
planet.
I've bought myself a drone, as I think it is time
I learned a new technology - it is sitting here,
but I need to get some spare batteries for it,
because with only eight minutes flying time I am
not going to learn very much. I also don't know,
as it is getting colder, whether or not I can
muster the stamina to sit out in the cold for
hours while learning to fly this thing, This is a
six axis drone (I must admit I don't know
what that means, in terms of functionality,
exactly), complete with always-on WiFi camera so
you can see what the drone is seeing, real time,
other than that I am going to have to try it out
to tell you what and how well it does. Amazingly
small, the white thing in plastic in the front is
a real time camera complete with WiFi server,
powered by the drone's battery. Finding a large
enough open space will be job one, although within
fifteen miles or so there is plenty of
countryside, seaward or in the direction of the
mountains. So - batteries, and then the vendor
sends you extra propellers, guards and motors when
you "report in", that's not bad. I noticed tonight
the model I bought is sold out already, and I
ordered this before Cyber Monday - just in time, I
guess. It is, I can see from the manual,
considerably more sophisticated than the one I
bought two years ago - but that was a gift, I
never flew that myself. The "giftee" didn't do
much with it either - one flight that ended on a
roof, one that ended in someone else's yard, one
indoors that demolished some glass ornaments, and
it hasn't flown since. That drone had a camera
with memory card, this drone will stream what the
camera sees live to an Android or iOS handset
(presumably with capture capability), which is
much more cool, methinks. As an aside, drone
ownership now has to be registered with the
FAA, the Federal Aviation
Authority, which will issue you a registration
number ($5) - you have to pay by credit or debit
card, so they have an address verification on you.
No, there is no provision to enter the
registration number in the electronics, which
would be a good way of doing this, make it illegal
to fly unregistered drones, and develop
electronics to "zap" drones that don't have the
number embedded. Owell. More to follow.
You may have seen some of
the publicity surrounding the accuracy of "fitness
trackers", more specifically the wrist worn
variety, which have been tested up the wazoo, and
found less than accurate. I picked the Time
article to link, because it seems to have the most
relevant information, without undue amounts of
advertising, but if you Google the subject you'll
find a plethora of articles and videos, some
ridiculous, some stating the wrists bands are
accurate, some stating the reverse.
My cuffs (I have two) and
blood oxygen meter I took into my doctor's office,
and asked her if I could check them against their
equipment. Again, case closed. It isn't about the
100% accuracy, then, it is about consistent
results over time, so you can build a database you
can refer to when you don't feel well, or at your
next checkup.
Stargate Atlantis is being
rerun on Comet - and I never realized how close to
me that was shot, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, the
place I go when I need to renew my passport, it is
closer than San Francisco. The place where it
seems much of Hong Kong and some of mainland China
is moving, driving up the house prices to
unimaginable heights. It seemed, last year,
driving through it, a somewhat rundown American
city, with addicted hookers working for fixes
across from my hotel, within walking distance from
the downtown business district - it is actually
close enough that the Seattle TV channels are on
the local cable system there. The hotel, and the
folks running it, were very pleasant, but again,
all a bit tatty and not well kept. The picture to
the right shows a hotel fire hydrant in downtown
Vancouver - marked as "non-compliant", it still
seems to pass safety inspections. But visitors do
rave about Vancouver, so what do I know...
At
least I have now increased my blogging
frequency, let's see if I can keep that up without
running out of interests. I have plenty, but for
quite a while I've simply not "put pen to paper",
if you follow my drift. I am my own worst enemy -
I will not put stuff on Facebook, or any of the
other social media, because they all usurp part
ownership of your output, and can use that and
sell that however they like - it is the reason why
I removed my videos from Youtube, and my blog from
Freeservers. But I do not then (and that's my own
fault) figure out how to stream video on my own
server, and do it from there, which I am perfectly
capable of doing, so why don't I build my own
Youtube? That does not try to take their efforts
away from creators? Let me put that on my "to do"
list, see how to stream stuff from my webserver,
and perhaps set up a platform for folks who want
to own their own things. It is the bane of my
existence, wherever you turn someone wants to use
your data, and I really don't think that is
acceptable. Apart from which, there isn't anyone
who can show me the random collection of data
actually sells anything - I am serious
here, there isn't a single vendor or manufacturer
or trading house that can show you how many of
what they sold to people whose data sets they
bought. You cannot reprogram someone's brain using
randomly acquired data, just popups and popovers
in front of their faces. But our intrepid
advertising agencies con everybody into believing
that works. "Nike sold 12% more shoes since they
contracted Facebook" they'll say. Nike might have
sold 12% more shoes if they pissed in the Hudson
River - thing is, no manufacturer has the guts to
"try something else", and the numbers on which 80%
of these decisions are based are complete fiction
(spent too many years on Wall Street and in the
Fortune 50 not to know that).
It's been a bit quiet, especially
as my workout partner sort of fell away, the past
few days, unwell, not going to the gym. I discovered
my "quick" workout sessions truly were too quick,
Friday I even forgot to get on the treadmill,
something I do when I drive to the gym, usually when
it rains and / or I am working out by myself. I need
to check if the HRM software "shorts" my time when
it loses sight of the GPS satellites, which happens,
now and again. Endomondo does not come to a full
stop when that happens, unlike the previous app, but
I wonder if the elapsed time readings are real.
On the one hand, we train people to make decisions after training, sober, with proper preparation and a good understanding of the case, and then we go do a "referendum", with effectively no control over who does what and why. And it just makes me scratch my head and ask myself if this really the way to run a country. It certainly isn't the way we run corporations...
Well, no, not
hell week - kind of a different year
for me though - got invited to a
Thanksgiving dinner by a neighbour,
and now some other folks have asked
me over for Chistmas, That's very
kind, very welcome, I remember from
New York that it takes a long time
to settle into a neighbourhood, used
as Americans are to itinerants - I
don't mean people upping within the
year, but moving in somewhere, and
leaving again a few years later, a
regular occurrence in this country
of career and job changes. But now I
have to go and get more gifts, in
the middle of the procrastinators
buying theirs, although one thing is
very clear, these days, no store
runs out of anything, until the last
minute. Actually, that isn't
entirely true, last year I had to
run around like crazy to find a
humongous Christmas stocking, big
enough for an electric cooker, all
of my regular stores had long since
run out, but somehow Fred Meyer
still had some, at the last minute -
half off, too.. That's it on the
left, big enough for a good sized
toddler.
Global Warming
I
can't very well tell you again it is
cold, because I just told you that a
few days ago. I am not even sure why
it bothers me the way it does - then
again, it usually doesn't get very
wintery up here, not like it does in
New York State and Virginia. But I
am looking at my yard thermometer
right now, at 8:15pm, and it is 25
outside, and it's been like that for
more than a week now, down to 18,
and it normally isn't. Not that I
can complain to anybody, or ask for
me money back, the entire country is
in a deep freeze, which happens. Global warming ,
they say. It's global cooling, more,
though, and this summer wasn't as
hot as the one before, either. It
will be interesting to see how the
Trump administration deals with
global warming, if indeed some of
his picks - and the man himself -
don't believe in it. I have to be
honest, and tell you that, while I
do believe the earth's climate is
warming up, I think that may well be
cyclical, and only marginally
influenced by mankind. But even if
that is so, there isn't a lot we're
going to achieve by "environmental
action", like cleaner cars and a
reduction in coal based energy
generation. You see, I note
everywhere that the increase in
energy requirements continues,
exponentially, and car manufacturers
seem to be building more cars than
ever before. We've even managed to
invent "energy efficient lighting"
of which there is now more than ever
before, and we're seeing more power
generation problems than we used to
before. So - we're creating more
people, and we're increasing our
spendable income, buying bigger
refrigerators, installing more air
conditioners, and driving more cars.
Conclusion? We're not achieving our
lofty aims, and endless conferences
and replacing old, polluting cars
with more polluting cars is not
going to work. Yes, a Toyota Prius
is nice, but it is a hybrid, and
that is, by my definition, a vehicle
propelled using gasoline. I know
this is a whine and I am not
providing any kind of a solution,
but if the Germans are shutting down
nuclear power and replacing that
with more expensive "green" energy,
we're heading down the wrong route.
I can tell you, when I see thirty
cars idling in line at the Starbucks
drive-thru, in the morning, to get
coffee, I know there isn't a way in
hell we're going to get anyone to
mind the environment in any
significant way. Apart from anything
else, the proliferation of wind and
solar power is going to have a
really negative effect on the
environment - without going on for
too long, air flow across the planet
has several functions, and reducing
that airflow, and intercepting some
of that airflow and converting it to
energy, which is eventually bled off
as heat, is not a good idea. Perhaps
we finally have a president who
understands this. Of course, as I am
preparing to stick this page on my
webserver it is 42 and raining. Go
figure.
I am not saying I am holier than thou, but even in the IT environment I then spent many years working in, our regular staffers often did not have a clue how to find and use information - in my earlier years as a journalist, we had researchers, whose job it was to do data mining, and who were very good at it - I think that somehow, we completely forgot to build that so necessary skill into our school system, even today pupils do not learn data mining in any meaningful way - and no, Googling is not the same thing. It may not be that clear, but spelling mistakes in searches are a major source of disinformation.
Vitamin DI
am not feeling 100%, so am
taking it easy tomorrow,
Thursday, maybe I am not even
going to the gym. On Thursdays D
no longer goes there anyway (he
now intersperses a long walk day
with a gym day, which makes more
sense), but I would normally
work out. However, I think the TDAP
vaccination may have put
me under the weather a bit - not
badly, but enough that I can do
with a late morning and an easy
day, plenty of home stuff to do
anyway. The TDAP shot combines
three vaccines - don't take what
I say as gospel, but I can't
think of any other reason why I
feel un-chipper, I had an
influenza vaccine one week, the
TDAP triple the next, I have an
impaired immune system, it is
cold, and there isn't anything
else that I can think of that
would give me that queasy
feeling. Besides, it really is
cold, at least it feels that
way, although my remote
thermometer only shows 30
degrees, barely freezing. Then
Friday will be a gym day, and as
D. leaves early for yoga on
Fridays, I have to walk,
regardless of the chill, anyway.
At least, with my big V-8, the
car warms up quickly when I
drive out in the cold,
especially since it sits there
idling for a couple of minutes
while I set up the dashcam and
program my GPS, this makes a
huge difference in warmup time,
not to mention defrosting. I've
heard people say "my car doesn't
do that", but in most cars, the
defroster setting kicks in the
A/C, not to cool the car, but to
dehumidify the interior, where
moisture collects on cold
surfaces. This helps add extra
heat to a cold cooling system,
in winter, and the removal of
the humidity helps warm the car,
this day and the next (assuming
you've closed your windows and
your seals are tight). But I try
not to drive to the gym, health
wise I am much better off doing
the walk and getting a dose of
sunlight, there is, by now, an
abundant body of research that
has proven that a dose of
sunlight, every day, is
necessary to keep all sorts of
biological and endocrine
processes in tune. I was made
more clearly aware of the
correlation when one of my
doctors did a vitamin D blood
test, this after it became more
widely known that vitamin D,
made by your body in response to
sunlight (any kind, filtered
will do too, daylight is
probably the better word), and,
these days, added to some foods
and some vitamins (like calcium,
hint hint). As a consequence, I
make a point of walking to and
from the gym on a daily basis
(that's 45 minutes right there),
drinking milk before bed every
day (as it turns out, the body
absorbs protein and vitamins
better during sleep, did you
know?) and religiously take my
calcium (but that has medical
reasons, in my case). I have
observed lots of folks don't
read up, and take things they
don't need (vitamin C comes to
mind) and don't take things they
should (vitamin D and calcium
come to mind, and not
necessarily in pill form!).
Could it just be the holidays? I am stressed out, for
no clear reason, unless the recent series of disasters,
from Aleppo to the Berlin Christmas Market, have
something to do with it. I am getting it wall-to-wall
on TV, on the one hand this overly sweet Christmas
drivel, doled out by blondes with injected lips on
heels, on the other hand seven year old bloggers in
Aleppo. I don't really believe one or the other. And
as I have clearly not done a lot to give my own life a
bit more direction, this past year, something I can
only blame myself for, I need to figure out how to put
that sparkle back where it belongs. Putting on four
lbs over the holiday doesn't help either, thanks to
the lovely invitation from my landlord's family.
Whoopsie.
To be honest, I thought it was just me, but as I was
standing in line at the Arco gas station folks around
me, after the obligatory "Happy Holidays", started
whining about what a bad year it has been. I mean,
with the election and the terror attacks and all the
other stuff. We still have troops out there, IS seems
to have established a new country without anybody
really noticing, this has been costing thousands of
lives, not to mention gargantuan amounts of dollars,
and there appears to be no way to take control of what
goes on. It probably slowly costs half a billion
dollars to kill one Daesh leader - and you have to
remember I was one of the people who helped spend
those oodles of dollars expanding the United States
military infrastructure necessary for the Iraq war.
That was exciting, and we won, right? Didn't we? I am
sorry to have to say this, but that's the feeling I
get when I see how we bomb the shit out of IS, who
seem to somehow have no end of armour and cannon and
stuff, and who then send people over to attack us with
trucks and on the ground in Paris and - I can't help
but remember - use our own airplanes and
infrastructure to wreak untold havoc on 9/11. I don't
know what I am missing, but I am not seeing we're
getting anywhere. And now Princess Leia is out of
action too, of all people.
A what? Ah, a Throttle Position Sensor. At least, I hope that's what the problem is - this is what happens with an older car, things need replacing. It's just a rough idle, but as with all things, if I don't fix that, something else will go wrong. There are a couple of other possible causes, but the experts on the car forums suggest to replace the TPS, reset the ECU (the central computer) and see what happens. So that is what I will do. In the picture, it sits at the top of the inlet manifold, the "throttle body" as it is called, to the right, and it shouldn't be a big deal to replace (assuming it isn't freezing cold, like today). Fingers crossed.
It is one of the more fascinating aspects of telecommunications technology that even though it is now possible, 99% of the time, to figure out whether a caller or sender is legitimate, the majority of scams are due to consumers answering the phone, or opening emails. I've gotten to the point I very rarely answer calls any more, use voicemail instead, and I make sure I use phones and services that have blocking capabilities - today, even "rejecting" a call isn't a good idea, as the miscreant will then know there is a person on the other end. Similarly, if I don't recognize an email sender I won't open the email, and if I don't recognize the sender and there is an attachment I automatically report it as spam. But judging from the research, the majority of adults will pick up the phone or open the email, no matter how many tools we give them to help make them safe. I have a hard time believing so many folks on the news report that they answered the phone and then got lured into giving away information. You'd think that not answering the phone would alleviate the problem, but no, the risk does not apply to "me". I am sure you have read all that before, and there are people who make a real art of this stuff - the other day, I began getting calls from an automated system that delivered a staccato ten calls per round, in such a way that on your phone, both lines (most phones have two to facilitate call waiting and conference calling) would be in use, blocking any other calls. It is a technique used to simulate urgency, and to make the callee concerned they cannot be reached. On most phones, you can set such a number to "silent ring", then check how many calls are made, and then you have ammo to report to the FCC. It is a bit of work, but when the FCC gets enough reports on a number, they'll go in and shut the bad guys down, we just have to keep reporting these things.
I got
here because I noticed at my doctor's office, when
I turned my WiFi on, that someone had installed an
internet thermostat (see it
in the list of WiFi sources in the picture to the
right). This is a good illustration of the
problems our WiFi standards are creating - a
primary precaution almost nobody takes is to not
broadcast the "SSID", the name of the network
connection, because an internet thermostat, like
an internet camera, is an easy gateway into
someone's network, especially since they usually
not only connect to your local network, but let
you control them from your smartphone. I know that
when I installed my network drive, which comes
with a free cloud service that lets you access
your files from the internet, it came with this
service enabled, and insisted I had to enter a
network user name and password into Seagate's
service to activate the drive. It took me a good
hour, and two full device re-initializations, to
figure out how to set up the drive without that
ability. I have my own internet server, where I
can park files I want access to, for instance when
I am in dodgy countries, where I can use an
encrypted VPN I carry that lets me access stuff I
don't want to carry across borders, or have on my
system, a place as predictable as a cloud drive
connected to a NAS drive by a known cloud supplier
is not really a safe way to access files. Last
three month trip abroad I easily spent two days
removing sensitive files from my laptop, and
putting those files I might need on my internet
server. It isn't that they can't be found there,
but the chances they're found are much smaller
than when they sit on a cloud server. And you
certainly can't access my NAS drive from outside
through my multiple firewalls.I was (and am) running two screens side-by-side, but before used two different systems, accessing a shared database on one of my new HP laptops. When the (overly long) HDMI cable on one system began acting up, I decided to move both screens to the HP, something it should be able to handle, much of the time I run an IPTV feed on one screen, and work on the other. But that did not work as well as I had expected, especially when the HP is hooked up to a Gigabit Ethernet connection, using just a slower WiFi connection gives fewer problems. The primary problem occurs when I run the IPTV feed over Ethernet using Internet Explorer 11 - after a while, that just hangs, and with it, all Ethernet connectivity grinds to a halt, without any kind of error, and the network interface reporting healthy. I have now installed Intel's latest Gigabit port driver, not offered by Windows Update, and that seems to have a beneficial effect, together with the use of Seamonkey/Firefox rather than Explorer. It is kind of strange; when I run Explorer it eventually hangs, and the HP system fan, which is load triggered, begins to blow like crazy. I am still trying to figure out why this happens - previously, ATSC HDTV dongles had that effect, but not on the HP, although I use the dongles more for TV recording than watching, and when recording you do not use the screen, of course.Ah, there it is - Internet Explorer, when displaying an IPTV feed, uses more than 50% of CPU cycles, while Seamonkey (combined with Adobe Flash) uses 6 to 8% of CPU cycles. That has to be the reason - this is, by the way, using Windows 8.1, which I use on one system because Windows Media Center, which supports the HDTV dongles, isn't available in later versions of Windows, killed off.
Bit of Googling, and sure enough, there are entire tribes complaining about process growth in Explorer 11, under several flavours of Windows. Well, that explains that. And I didn't use Explorer 11 much, mostly Seamonkey to watch IPTV, when I was using a separate CPU for each screen. So the hanging issues aren't directly related to the Ethernet port or the USB ports, something I thought might be the case. It is just Explorer 11, possibly in combination with whatever Explorer uses to display IPTV, I am assuming that isn't Flash. I also note process growth in Forticlient, or one of its subprocesses, the Forticlient VPN, which I don't think I use but gets started by the overall Forticlient antivirus package. I had never chased any of this stuff down, but now that I run everything on one single CPU, I need to make sure I have some control, there isn't a reason why some software should be hanging so bad I have to reboot. That was, after all, the primary reason why I replaced my Lenovo with the HPs - faster more sophisticated processor, more memory, bigger disks. One HP (with the Intel Core i5-2540M CPU @ 2.6GHz) should be able to run everything I normally use all at the same time. Having said that, I've spent half my career ensuring my team's operating environment worked (I've always had that as a sideline, even if it wasn't my formal job), and know all too well that you can't give a developer enough capacity, they're always going to run more than they ought to, especially in "kluged in" network applications, and doing reporting in vastly oversized spreadsheets. I try not to do that myself, but it always creeps up on you. Having said that, if this does not work, I can always switch back to using two CPUs, although I am more comfortable having the secondary HP as a "spare". I've never gone to where I had a full spare, while the 2560p and 2570p aren't 100% "alike", they're alike enough that all I would have to do is swap the hard disks, and one wonderful aspect of the Elitebooks (these, at least) is that they are easy to clean and maintain, the bottom slides right off, I could get used to that, all of my previous laptops always had the plate-and-screw business going on. I bought a box full of compressed air cans, it really is three minutes' work, and using the spare to drain a battery fully, for maintenance, then swap it out, is great too, they have the same battery and charger. I am still looking at what causes all of this, in many ways I would want to switch to Windows 10 altogether, for which I have a couple of valid licenses, but several of the software packages I use aren't supported under Windows 10 any more, and for now, Windows Media Center in particular, which is a full blown broadcast TV / cable TV application with recording, time delay, and a perfect 2 week programming guide, stops me from ditching 8.1. There are some third party applications that do TV and cable and satellite, but none of them work as well as Microsoft's Windows Media Center does, credit where credit is due.
Runaway Windows
And if that was not enough I discovered
HP installs the Bluetooth drivers for these laptops with
timeout enabled - the mobile operating system can "disable the
devices to save power". And for unclear reasons, on a
Bluetooth keyboard or mouse the OS does exactly that - after
ten or twenty minutes, the connection times out, and you have
to turn off and restart the Bluetooth device, which
is why I kept having to reboot my keyboard/keypad combo. I
went through the drivers and disabled the capability - except
for one, which crashes when I try to change it. But it looks
like that fixed the problem. I should remember to look these
things up on the internet more often, as by now, just about
everything imaginable has been documented, and gets updated
further every day.
For years, I had an argument with my PCP about the need to eat
breakfast, and how eating breakfast helped with lots of things,
including weight control. I tend to follow advice from medical
doctors, but I had eliminated breakfast from my diet many years and two
doctors before, because I was gaining weight and, since this was likely
due to my medication, there was little I could do, except, drastically,
try to reduce my calorie intake. Eating one less meal per day (I was
married at the time, and would normally eat breakfast and lunch in the
office, with colleagues, dinner with the missus at home, after I picked
her up from her commuter train stop) might help me do that, I thought. I
think it worked. So now, finally, I've found a seemingly knowledgeable
academic (and medical doctor) who appears to support my view,
albeit for different reasons. I have no idea why the Telegraph put this
article in the "Women's Health" section, by the way, it is of interest
to all, and not in any way specific to any gender.
One of the excruciating facts of life is that you really can't blog
about companies you do business with any more, lest cyber criminals try
and go after your personal details with them. So I mentioned Turbotax,
above, only because I no longer use them, and only mention Quicken
because I use their software with an API, I do not use their online
offering. You won't find me mentioning banks I use - if I mention a bank
it is because I am not their customer. Etc. I've seen (in my own data
streams, server logs and in my emails) that cyber criminals actually
read blogs and try and use your personal information to hack you - not
new, many years of that - and many have quite complete databases,
including your telephone numbers. Again, that's a reason not to answer
the phone when you don't recognize the number, ever - in fact, most
folks I do business with don't have the number I normally use privately.
The vendor / bank / supplier wants your cellphone number? Don't give it
to them - unless there is a real reason why you would want an
organization to text you - like two factor authentication - there
isn't a need to give it to them. These days, most get just the one,
"home" number, there is, for most organizations and businesses, no need
to have any other numbers you might use. Not using your home area code
for your "secure" phone is another way of making sure you're safe, the
time of "long distance calls" is long gone.
Great. It was warming up, but now it is back down to 22 - at 9pm. I don't know, I am just not enjoying the cold. Not that I have to be in it a lot, but I wouldn't mind walking to the gym. I just don't when it means freezing, what can I tell you - to a large extent, I do this to myself, because I like working out in the early morning, when it does warm up in the course of the day. Probably take the car tomorrow, and run into Bellevue to get my office mail, while I am out and about, a hardship it is not, it is just too cold and the wrong season for me to work on the car or work in the garden and things. Owell. Doctor stuff first, and we'll take the week from there - they are forecasting rain, but the temperature dropped back to freezing, although the car wasn't covered in ice this morning. That's a neigbour's fountain, to the left, still running, but mostly frozen.
More Windows Woes
I can see from the Intuit help forums I am not the only one having this problem, but Intuit, as always, doesn't want to tell the world what the problem really is. I think it is simply copy protection, I think the software thinks it is running on too many CPUs, which Intuit discourages. Anyway, I got it sorted, and while I was at it created a new clone of the hard disk, now I have to figure out where the auto-start of Acronis hangs out, ah - buried deep in the Windows registry
, in three different places, you can disable what you like in the MSCFG configuration utility, it still autostarts. For no reason, I might add, but I've seen in several different versions of the Acronis Imager, all written for disk manufacturers, that it is able to communicate back to Acronis. In one case, in the version provided by Intel, it tries to prevent you from installing it unless you provide your email address. To be honest, I don't know that all this screwing around in other people's operating systems - without permission! - gets them anything, other than a lot of pissed off customers, judging by the responses in the Microsoft forums. Horrendous.
Thinking about whether or not to quickly post this bit of blog, or wait until I get the StarTech NAS drive, I realized I could just take its portrait when it gets here - Tuesday - post this, and then post more next week, once I have it all set up and tested. This unit works differently from others I've owned or used, so I ought to take my time - I am assuming I will be able to mount file systems under NFS, but as there isn't a mention of it in the manual, and there are some protocols I've never used before, I may end up having to do some learning, or, perhaps, finagling... I noticed, as well, that I had previously bought another StarTech product - an eSATA-to-USB3 interface cable, which has become one of my interface mainstays, considering the avalanche of USB3 ports in equipment, and my growing collection of SATA drives. Thankfully, my "new" HP laptops have eSATA ports, and I just managed to snarf an interface card, because, USB or no USB, the native, built in, interface for your hard disks - all of them, SSD or conventional - is still SATA, and will be for a long time. That external USB drive you got for Christmas? It has a SATA drive inside...
Waa! Just as I see my NAS drive is getting here a day early (Amazon is fiendishly clever, they do this all the time now) my 2TB backup drive won't mount, so I've been running a scrub on it for the past eight(!) hours. Looks like it's one of those file mishaps, but for as long as that scrub is running I can't get started on the new drives. Owell. Funny, Murphy always turns up somehow..
Say What?
While it is still non-urgent, my network storage (NAS drive) is filling up, and I have only 33% space left of the 4 terabytes that were in the drive I bought only a year ago ($135, or $33.75 per terabyte). Admittedly, I transferred some backups to it, but I see now just my dashcam archive alone has grown to almost a terabyte, and there are my daily backups, the recorded HDTV, etc. The more storage you buy, the more you use, QED. And I had not transferred almost 1.5 terabytes of older archives to the NAS drive, not to fill it up too much.
Annoyingly, there's been a really large fire at an apartment building under construction - will Americans never learn? Entire apartment complexes built in woodframe, this went up like a torch, practically destroyed some nearby occupied buildings, and soot and ashes are all over for miles. Truly amazing - imagine they'd finished this complex, moved elderly folk in, and then it burned, and they continue to build in wood because it is "renewable". Forgive me, I come from somewhere we've been building in brick and concrete since before the war, a lot sturdier and a lot safer. Click on the pic, and you'll get an enlargement that shows clearly the amazing amount of ash and soot falling on the world a few miles from the location of the fire.
What is driving him?
Amazing, the amount of disk space you need, these days, to store all your stuff. Ten freakin' terabytes, to be on the safe side. The "old" NAS drive I only bought and installed a year ago... Mind you, I've run into the first issues, in that a ROBOCOPY file transfer from one NAS drive to the new one ate some 2 terabytes of space that I appear unable to recover, so now I am moving my files off the drive, will then reinitialize, and figure out what happened. It may be it does not like Windows 7, which is what I was using at the time, we'll see. It is an interesting conundrum, let's see if I can recover the entire disk space, and then see what went wrong where. Not a word about this on the forums anywhere.. You're best off, by the way, making sure you always have ample storage space. Let's say you have a 4 terabyte drive, and it is filling up. You buy another, or a bigger drive, but now you would need to transfer some of that load to the new drive. This is not easy. On network drives, you can no longer make that direct-to-PC connection, so you end up having to copy a terabyte of data from one system to another - traversing Ethernet connections twice. That can take days, and you have a good chance the system you're using is going to hang up on you, at some point. So adding storage space way before you need it, and then changing your backup strategies, way before you need to, is a good idea, that way you can take your time making sure you have copies of everything you need. And test your new drive, update its firmware, and learn how to use it - I'm on my second reinitialization of the StarTech already, after the first time something did not work as advertised.
It was warming up, but then the cold came back, and overnight, the snow. Not a lot of it, but the warming up isn't happening yet, and so I can't go and try out my drone. Thatsabummer. It'll get there, though, but it really is time for me to get out of the house and "do stuff", I've been sedentary for too long. Doesn't mean I don't go and work out and do me chores, taxes are done, but I need to get out and change my oil and do other things, especially my throttle position sensor appears not to be happy, and I have the replacement sitting ready. Then, of course, I couldn't back the car into the driveway, ice and snow, switched to four wheel drive, and put three tons of steel right into the garage door, which I have never done before. Mind you, in most of my houses the car went in the garage, and this one is used for storing stuff, like some Americans do. Owell. Now I have to figure out where to get these panels, if I can't, umm, "undent" them.
Life is not a spreadsheet
It wouldn't be the first time I fell prey to "impulse buying" - couple years ago, I bought a 4K TV set / monitor at Fred Meyer, on sale as a customer return, only to discover I could have bought it new, for $45 less, at Amazon. I had started reprogramming the firmware, and thought returning it probably wasn't worth it, so I didn't, but yesterday I did order a tabletop oven from Amazon, for a $13 savings. I had wanted to try one of those "turbo convection ovens" out, considering that, just for me cooking dinner and putting some in the freezer, using the entire big furnace oven makes no sense, and C's toaster oven is just too small and hard to clean - it has convection and circulation and everything else too. A turbo oven, you know, one with a glass basin and the infrared heating element in the lid, seems something I can just get out when I need it, and leave it stored away the rest of the time.
Turbo Oven
Testing it, though, I noticed the "20% faster" story is just a fairytale, and the temperatures listed in the manual and on the thermostat aren't even close to each other. I happen to have an infrared thermometer, so stuck two slices of bread in the thing, on the lower and higher rack, set it for 350° Fahrenheit, and let have at it. Sure enough, the top slice didn't get to 200° until 20 minutes later, and 210 10 minutes after that. I don't mind this, for as long as I know, so when I get the new oven (which, for $13 less, comes with an additional spacer ring), I'm going to do more testing - to begin with, at 400°, again, with slices of bread, and then with a small chicken with potatoes. But if a slice of bread takes 20 minutes to get to 200°, with what is supposed to be "instant on" technology, there can't possibly be much time savings over other small ovens, and frying or roasting stuff in cooking pots is likely faster. On top of that, these things turn off at the end of their cooking time, and that means the entire head of the oven, mostly made of plastic, gets heated by the element cooling down, and the hot air below it, 'coz that's where heat goes, up. What you can do is use a cooking timer, and turn the thermostat to off at the end of the cooking time, then let the circulation fan dissipate the heat - I think not doing that is why so many in the Amazon review section complain these ovens do not last. So we'll see, at least they are easy to clean, and you can see how your food is doing. On my original test setting, by the way, the bread wasn't quite toast after half an hour. The new unit will have an extra couple of inches of spacer ring, probably a boon with chickens, legs of lamb or turkey, and small roasts. Mo' later, with pics, maybe even video, promise.
Although a recent BBC program about health had it that fish oil
capsules have an equal or better health benefit than what the doctors
call "oily fish", I, umm, "canned" my intake of fish oil a few months
ago. I do make a point of eating fish a few times a week, mostly as
Sashimi grade raw tuna, my supermarket sells that in (frozen) chunks,
which I find delicious, with a dab of imported soy sauce and some chili
oil. Fish oil, and I knew this from hospital treatments and from
surgery, can negatively affect blood clotting, and considering my
prescription medication and all the other stuff I take, I thought I'd
try cutting back on some of these things, since we're more or less
automatically advised high dosages, without much justification, as a
sort of insurance policy. So I still take multi-vitamin, but have halved
my intake of calcium with vitamin D, calcium supplements now known to
potentially be able to cause arterial deposits,
and reduced the "heart healthy aspirin", spooked a bit by the complete
absence of research into lower dosages of these supplements. Aspirin, in
higher doses, is known to be able to cause gastro-intestinal bleeding,
and if you add side effects from fish oil to side effects from aspirin,
and consider there is medication I have to take on doctor's orders that
can do nasty things to me, it made sense for me to cut back where I
could cut back - my rheumatologist even took me off some of the
arthritis medication I had been taking for years. With the advantage of
quarterly blood tests, annual Dexa scans, and other tests my doctors
routinely do, I should be able to see if the reduction shows any change,
and if so, where the change manifests itself. I think I am seeing
better recovery from cuts and bruises and things, but I'll wait until my
next tests to report something to you more conclusively.
These aren't overnight solutions, and without test results opinions are
just like assholes - everybody has one. And let's see - what else do I
not take? I halved (with doctor approval) my statins a couple of years
ago, when I realized that the muscle ache in my legs might be caused by
them, according to research, and sure enough, never had a twinge since.
I've heard from an elderly acquaintance he has now been taken completely
off statins, after he became virtually unable to walk, last summer. I
understand he is now slowly improving - but seriously, if you're on a
regular dose of statins that doesn't really get monitored, talk to your
doctor, and do a cholesterol check. Same for blood pressure
medication - there is an impressive list of side effects, and the
medical profession has a tendency to stabilize you, and then never look
at the dosage again. I've now reduced my dosage, I check my blood
pressure first thing in the morning anyway, part of the get-up-and-go
routine, and so far I am not seeing my blood pressure go up by much.
I'll get my doctor to take another 10mg off the dosage, when I next need
to get a refill. This is all wonderful stuff, but it is medication, and
it has side effects. Last but not least, a researcher in The
Netherlands thinks proteins before bed help build muscle overnight, if
you work out, and so I've started imbibing a couple of glasses of milk
in the evening. We all tend to think milk is for the morning, but
as it turns out our bodies get more out of the white stuff while we
sleep - and, of course, milk is a source of calcium, and here in the
United States it has vitamin D added to it. Seriously. I have since
bulked up a bit, although I have no way of knowing whether milk was the
trigger, it may just be I've been increasing my weights and things, over
the months. Maybe a bit of both. Who knows. Can't harm you, milk before
bed, better than beer, or, in my case, wine. What I do know is that
ever since I have adjusted the various dosages of both prescription and
non-prescription medication, and added the evening milk seven days a
week, I am less prone to bleeding, I've added 10 lbs, have more muscle
in lots of places, and it seems my heart palpitations (mostly triggered
by the artificial thyroid hormone I have to take) have largely gone
away.
The Itch you can Scratch
Interesting - the next generation of "Turbo Ovens" (I have now received the cheaper Hometech
version) has some added bits - a two inch ring to optionally move the
infrared head away from the food being cooked, so the heating element
isn't right on top of the chicken, and a drip tray, so you can catch the
juices in something that fits in the dishwasher. And there is a stand
so you can park the head where it won't burn the house down. All in all,
though, this is more of a marketing gimmick than a cooking tool. It
says it reduces cholesterol - really? If this reduces
cholesterol, then so does a Zippo. Or a charcoal grill. Or a toaster
oven. Or a Fiat 500. Or your cousin Susan. I'll tell you more about it
once I've cooked some dinner in it, but I can tell you now that if it
weren't cheap, it would be useless - nice light, nice concept, but it is
all marketing - if your heating element is as exposed here as you can
see in the picture below, most of the heat goes "out the window" - here
rather literally - and it is then just a noisy gimmick. What with the
electricals - no electronics - all positioned right above the heating
element, which radiates more light than infra-red energy, in the
removable lid, failure is built in, and safe it isn't. Look inside your
toaster oven, when it is toastering - that's infrared. This is not.
Why I am chilly I don't know, but I've just turned the auxiliary heat
back on. Funny, it is getting colder outside, but it's been a warmish
day, with lots of sun, and the thermometer still has the house at
"comfortable". I suppose our bodies are able to predict, to some extent,
that it's going to be a cold night. Wonder what the mechanism is -
humidity? Rate of cooldown? I did put away the snowboots, today, I don't
think we're going to have another batch of snow, this year, though it
snowed again downtown, over the weekend, but then the sun comes out and
it's all gone. We didn't get as much moisture as California did, but a
good amount, I don't think anybody on this coast is going to be
complaining about drought, in 2017. Odear, snow again..
Network Drives - Take Three
That was painful. When the Startech NAS drive turned out to have a software problem, I had transferred a couple of terabytes
to it already, and taking that back off, and putting it on other,
smaller drives, wasn't an easy task. By Friday, that was all done, and I
was able to ship the drive back to Amazon (minus the two 3 terabyte
Hitachi drives, which were headed for the replacement array). These
days, when you return something your account is credited when the UPS person scans in the shipping label, and on Sunday, the postman delivered my new drive, which now needed setting up.
You may think you're reasonably secure, but the people who are supposed to look after your internet security,
for the most part, don't. I had two occasions, recently, where I saw a
hack attack using a fake Microsoft website, in both cases coming from a
domain managed by Godaddy. On both occasions, I alerted Godaddy's main
access points, on Facebook and on Twitter, and in both cases I was told
to "fill out the abuse form at such-and-such website". In both cases, as
I had posted screen captures of the website and the domain WHOIS, I
explained they had all of the information they needed, and asked if they
were refusing to investigate. The first time, they looked again, and
took the domain offline. The second time, they came back and said they
did not host the domain, and I had to explain it was managed by Godaddy
Singapore, and copy Microsoft on the tweet. That got some action, but
the thing is that these are the people who supposedly are looking after
your internet and web-security - this was a code injection
carried out via advertising on a news website. It just does not work, so
don't think your Xfinity internet or your FIOS give you security,
because they don't, and the hackers do nothing else, seven days a week,
than probing network back doors. You have one, they'll find it, if not
tomorrow, then next week.
I've tried a number of "free" virus packages, over the years, AVG,
Microsoft Defender, Avast, Forticlient, but one for the other, they're
either getting more invasive, or become CPU-hogs. Forticlient and
Defender were the latest to overtax my laptop - on the HP's, I can tell
they're doing double duty when the fan starts cranking, small but
powerful the fan will respond to load if you have the operating system
set up to do that. Looking around, I found a Chinese company that now
has a product out that come in a "light" version - Qihoo 360 Technology
out of Beijing has the major advantage that it operates inside the
Great Chinese Firewall, so presumably knows a lot of stuff we don't, it
has hundreds of millions of users of its free software in the Far East,
and we have to assume this is a tool sanctioned by the Chinese internet watchdogs.
"360 Total Security" comes in a stripped down "Essential" version,
which takes away much of the invasive stuff they and other virus folks
do, important for me as I customize my Windows installs to a significant
extent. There are varying appraisals of Qihoo's capabilities and
practices out on the internet, set to some extent by the antivirus
software they make for smartphones, but I can't, after testing on a
spare laptop, say I've found problems with it, and it certainly goes
easy, at least in the "light" version, on the CPU cycles. It is
excellent under Windows 7, where there isn't a Windows Defender, and
Windows 8.1, where you can (with the help of a Microsoft tool) disable
Defender completely, under Windows 10 I don't think you can disable
Defender, come to think of it, I've not tried the Microsoft Sysinternals
tool there. As we speak, I am streaming video to Windows Media Server
from a NAS device, while doing some other things, writing here, and
unlike with other virus applications, I am under 10% of CPU, which means
the laptop is running cool. I don't so much mind it running a bit
hotter, but when I was watching a live stream through Internet Explorer
with Forticlient running in the background, the system sounded like a
747 during takeoff, and would, on occasion, simply grind to a halt,
probably running out of memory, which is a bit weird, with 16GB of RAM.
I've done a lot of reconfiguring, but with Forticlient and Windows
Defender off, I've got much more "oompf". It was nice while it
lasted....
Woopsie. I very nearly completely screwed up my Windows 8.1 install by making too many changes in the registry, using a handy Microsoft tool called "autoruns"
that analyzes all autostart code. After my overdoing it, Windows
wouldn't boot any more, Windows 8 repair DVDs couldn't fix it, but
eventually a Windows 10 repair DVD went in and successfully undid the
last install I had made - it was unrelated, but brought the system back
to earlier in the day. Good show, that, it booted afterwards, took a
while, but cleaned up beautifully, not a trace of my "unhandywork". I
had been trying to activate facial recognition in HP's Protecttools
suite, not with a lot of success. Do I need it? No, the facilities I
use, PIN + Bluetooth + password, work fine and are very secure, I
was just curious. Eventually, I realized the Windows 7 Pro install I
have on the Elitebook 2570p actually came from the 2560p, while the
Windows 8.1 Pro install I have on the 2560p came from my older Lenovo, I
was amazed I could even make that work (but then that was an upgrade
from an earlier Windows 7 install). While the 2560 has a built-in
camera, the 2570 does not - some business laptops are made without what
many organizations call "high risk" devices, and I was trying to get the
facial login working with a USB camera, which is not, of course, active
before the operating system loads. On the 2560, I can't get HP's facial
recognition to run because it isn't compatible with Windows 8.1 and
above.
"Almost" Foreclosed
Well, that's sorted - new dentist, after our old one retired, his
replacement did stuff to my housemate that wasn't insurance covered, and
I found another dentist in Everett who did the same thing to me. As our
insurance plans pre-approve procedures, I can only come to the
conclusion that some dentists deliberately "pad the books" in the
hope you'll just pay when they send a bill. I don't, and they lose a
customer when they do that to me. I have, generally, found the Seattle
area seems to have an over-abundance of medical professionals - dense
enough that a downtown section of Seattle is referred to as "Pill Hill"
by the locals. And I've found some institutions walk all over patients -
SCCA, the Seattle Cancer Care Association, where I wasn't even a
patient, sent me mail coming from the "Thyroid Cancer Survivors
Association", as if it is their duty to let the Postal Service and my
housemates know about my medical condition, and after I had a chest
X-ray there, began sending me reminders for mammograms, which they
referred to in confirmations of a referral for X-rays. Needless to say, I
do not have mammaries, I don't even think I am a woman, and I think
SCCA has little or no respect for its patients. I can have my Medicare-mandated chest X-rays elsewhere.
While I have largely done everything I had planned to do, I noticed today I am still procrastinating
on some other levels - planning, preparing, then not doing whatever.
I've got some replacement parts I ordered last summer sitting in the
garage to prove it. So better get me skates on - part of it was the cold
winter, didn't much feel like outdoor activities. But I think (hope?)
that's done with, the temperature is back where it is supposed to be,
this time of year, 50's, we've sent the cold stuff East, they're used to
it.
As
if that isn't enough, I head for Walmart to return a ZTE phone I just
bought, you used to be able to buy prepaid T-Mobile handsets at Walmart
and Best Buy and stick a T-Mobile SIM card in them, but no more.
Then I went to pay for my mailbox / office address, and my freakin'
international Visa card was declined. This occasionally happens, there
are merchants and payment processors in the United States that can't
handle international accounts, strange in a country that is end-to-end
immigrants, but there it is. Because you never really know what caused
the decline, I am now having to wait for a new card, coming from
overseas, that can take "a week or two". But, coming home, I find my new
credit card on the doormat, so that brightens things up a bit,
especially since this card is married to bank and savings accounts and
my financial software online, it's been a few years since I've had that
luxury, and I must say the bank really sorted that seamlessly and well,
setting the whole thing up and adding the account to my software was
minutes' work, very impressed. Now I hope that when I change over to two factor authentication,
next week, all that does not break. The software support people didn't
really understand what I was talkin about, half hour chat for nothing,
and the bank support folks thought it would be OK, but "check with the
software folks". So all I can do is try...
A discombobulating week, then. I hate changing medical providers (7
countries on 3 continents, kinda sorta), and a new dentist is definitely
that, but Hennessey and his staff seem OK, even is cautious enough to
send me to a surgeon for the removal of a molar (rather than
patch it or try and do it himself, which, with me on
immuno-suppressants, would not be smart). It is appreciated. And then I
need to figure out how to add the new credit card to my Quicken lineup -
always a challenge, I've had so many providers, in the past, who said
they are Quicken-compatible, and then turn out to either not work with
it at all, or use Web Connect, effectively a screen scraper for
situations where a bank won't implement Quicken's secure protocol,
and screen scrapers I do not use, they don't really work. Quicken's API
is nice, in that you do not have to use an insecure tool, like a
browser, to get your data, Quicken uses an encrypted connnection with
financial institutions that support that. Nothing to hack, and it
largely has functioned well, over the years (my use goes back to 1991,
or thereabouts, although I seem to recall using their predecessor
software before that). Ah, there it is - seems a straightforward
connection to my bank, with an existing way to provision online access
to the new card. I've been doing my daily online routine for so long, it
is hard for me to imagine people not checking their account transactions
on a daily basis, but, admittedly, that's a single mouse click for me,
although I can't remember the last time I had a dodgy transaction -
actually, yes, I can look that up, that was in early 2015, when my
overseas card account got hacked by Brazilian miscreants. They didn't
hack my account (or my PC) per se, the hackers breached the bank's
security, and got hold of account numbers they then used all over
Brazil, for smaller purchases. Dozens of transactions on multiple
accounts per day kinda gave them away.. Thankfully the bank made no
issue of refunding the charges and cleaning up the account, after I
explained I had not been to Brazil - ever. So I'll wait for the card,
activate that when it gets here, make a purchase or two, add the account
to Quicken, do an update, and once all that "works good" I'll change my
back login over to two factor authentication, which I understand they
now support. I've done the same with Paypal, where I was using SecurID,
but they too now have two factor (SMS) authentication, a technology
that is very rapidly now gaining ground, even government service
websites in various countries have it working. Better safe than broke,
eh?
It is fascinating to conjecture whether the originally shelled cephalopods, like squid and cuttlefish, were shelled tentacled non-locomotors,
and developed their jet propulsion so they could get around more
easily, or get away from predators. Then, they found that by losing
weight (i.e., reducing and eventually losing the shell), they could get
around even faster. Only the nautilus, today, retains a shell, and isn't
very fast getting around. Fascinating, evolution, and we have actual
fossils of ancient cephalopods, as their shells survived longer than
their non-shelled cousins did. The New York Times has a nice picture of a
166 million year old fossil. Especially interesting is how the
cephalopod must have been biologically sufficiently successful to be
able to evolve into a very different animal, and the time taken would
account for the amount of intelligence that developed in the squid and
the cuttlefish. It is the kind of evolution that makes sense to me -
first, it figures out how to use it tentacles to move around a bit,
while feeding, then its stomach or gills system gains strength and
learns how to expel water to move more easily, off the ocean floor, etc.
It is the kind of logical evolution an engineering mind like mine
likes. The computer jock in me likes the idea that, at several stages in
its evolution, the cephalopod went through a decision making process -
ah, if I use this stomach I can move from A to B in half the time I can
with my tentacles, so I can feed more, and then "ah, this propulsion
thing lets me get away from these shell breaking crabs" to "if I don't
have to drag the shell around with me I have much better reach" and "now
I can overtake and consume fast moving fish!" as the propulsion is
strengthened and the streamlining develops. It's a bit like a living
spaceship of the waters, complete with having to turn around to execute a
braking maneuver, when it has the tentacles and mouth (landing gear and
door) in the right place, all at once. Don't need to see what you can
feel, don't need to feel what you can see. All slowly and deliberately
and very successfully. I can feel a science fiction story coming on.
Having been involved with GSM wireless telephony more or less from its
inception in the United States, I have, for years, been a T-Mobile
customer, especially since in the early days only GSM phones were able
to roam overseas, and "ours" (CDMA phones from my employer, NYNEX) could
not. Something I've done practically from Day One is tether, connect my
laptop to the internet through the cellular protocol, GSM was designed digitally
from the get go, while CDMA was based on AMPS, and originally analog.
Checking the tethering capabilities on a Nokia and a Samsung handset I
found the Nokia wouldn't work (I've since fixed that in the T-Mobile
service database), but the Samsung blew me away - the picture here shows
you the Speedtest rate on that handset on 4G-LTE: a blazing 38 Mbps
down, 20 Mbps up. That's faster than the FIOS base rate! I wish the
cellular networks had enough bandwidth that you could use them as
Internet providers, and not have to bother with the likes of FIOS and
Xfinity, which charge you extra if you just want internet, and not cable
or phone service. Wish the gummint would do something about this - you
have hopefully noticed the providers all compete on speed and
facilities, and not on cost, and that used to be illegal, in the United
States, it is basically a cartel keeping prices artificially high. Wires
on poles don't cost much, they really do not have any kind of an
excuse.
March 19, 2017: The little everyday things
Keywords: backup, car maintenance, teeth, painkillers, groceries, fluoride, voltaren, green card, credit rating
Brilliantly, I wiped out an entire backup, when all I wanted to do was
remove it from the database, and reinstate it - one wrong click, 800GB
wiped. I've got the entire original, but it just is a pain to redo the
whole thing (all over again). Not much choice, though, it's the only
"full" backup of what I have on my main drive, including everything I
have, in the past, purged from it, dating back to when I stuck a
terabyte drive in my past Lenovo - that was, umm, December 2013. At that
time, I realized that I could keep a lot of archive material on the
terabyte drive, but I'd have to create a full copy of the data on the
drive, and then I wrote a scripts to be able to robocopy all of the
archives to an external 2 terabyte archival drive. And see, this is the
problem with these large drives - it can take days to run a full
backup. You only have to do that once in a while, the rest of the time
you can do incremental, but still it is a big job and you really can't
use your system while it runs. Thankfully, I have two AIS Backup
licenses, so I was able to move the drive to my "backup" Elitebook, and
re-run the backup from there, then re-instate it to my primary laptop.
Worked. Phew.
Now the weather must improve, or at last it should stop raining, so I can change my oil
and a couple of other filters and things on the car. I've only got the
one car, and it's been hiccuping, and I have the bits to try and remedy
that, should have done that before winter set in. I cannot afford to go
out and buy another car, even if I do now have a smidgen of credit, so I
really can't afford to procrastinate. The only extravagant expense I
must weather, next month, is the renewal of my green card - that used to
be a lifetime thing, but now you have to fork over $600 every ten years
to get the card renewed. Just that, replace the plastic. It's not like
we aren't taxpayers, they really ought not to charge for this, or charge
according to income.
Fluoride
Having read up on fluoride,
I realize it is a toxin, and imbibing it through the stomach when there
is perfectly good fluoride mouthwash is perhaps not necessary. I did
use a prescription mouthwash during the years I was living in Virginia,
when I was on well water, but here we use water from an artesian well,
which we fetch in those large plastic water bottles you know from water
dispensers. So I've taken to a supermarket fluoride mouthwash, rather
than the ubiquitous Listerine, to make sure my teeth get their
protective fix. I am not quite sure why I suddenly decided to take
another look at fluoride, the discussion largely passed me by, and I
always "knew" fluoride was good for your teeth - but to be honest, I
never looked at the availability of fluoride mouthwashes. Yes, you can
do things "topically", and I should have probably figured out a lot
sooner than taking things via the stomach lets chemicals go all
sorts of places they probably have no reason to be. I've got the same
thing going on with Voltaren, a.k.a. Diclofenac Sodium, given to me many
years ago to medicate a form of arthritis. Very effective, too, and I
am saying this based on personal experience. But unbeknownst to me, this
seems to have become a generic NSAID, available over the counter
in some countries, though not in the United States. In fact, when I
moved here, Voltaren wasn't even yet approved. And now, after reading up
and doing some research, I am beginning to see why my rheumatologist is
loth to have me take Voltaren
or its generic any more, even though I had been taking this daily, for
years. Yes, it has killed patients, but then so has much of my other
medication, we used to accept that that was the name of the game. Plus
ça change...
Groceries
Ah. 52 year old Khalid Masood was a known criminal, and nobody
(at least at the moment) knows why he did what he did, no "terror
priors". What set him off. Etcetera. We'll get more information, I am
sure, but regardless of the research and the police investigations, we
really don't have an understanding what turns these folks into
murderers, and why they hate, seemingly, entire societies. What drives
them to a "them and us" view of the world, where it is them against the
world - take into consideration that Islamic assailants often kill other
Muslims, and we have, in London, another perfect example that the
victim's religion, ethnicity, ancestry, really does not matter to the
assailant. Once they go over the edge they kill blindly, wantonly
- and this was not sufficiently premeditated that Masood had gotten
firearms, which are, even in England, easy to get. It does compare with
9/11 - there, they used ordinary airliners, here, Masood used a rental
car and a butcher knife. The less preparation, it would seem to me, the
slimmer the chance you'll get "prevented". Yes, no, I really don't hve
anything to add that someone hasn't already written or said, but just
thought I'd express, again, that I don't understand why these folks
think this is good stuff - I follow the exploits of the Dutch, German
and Austrian jihadis that leave for Syria, or wherever, and only get the
impression these are mostly young, misguided, loose cannons, where the
big problem is that they seem to be presented with a religious view that
allows them to murder. I don't see hundreds of Jews, Jehova's
Witnesses, Buddhists, Lutherans, go someplace and be trained to be
assassins and murders, being told by their preachers it is OK to kill or
maim anyone you want, to douse women in sulphuric acid, to chop little
kid's heads off and burn police officers alive.
I didn't even know what a TPS was
Allright, throttle position sensor replaced, idle air control
valve replaced, its port cleaned, throttle body cleaned, the picture to
the right shows the old idle air control valve, which certainly had
some carbon deposits (click the link above and you'll see what a new one
looks like). I'll now run, with the next fillup, some upper cylinder lubricant through the fuel system, I understand that is a solvent and will clean gunk
out, and in the meantime see what else I need to do, in terms of
maintenance. I have a lower temperature thermostat sitting around, and
think my next step ought to be to put that in, which will help in that I
can flush the entire fuel system once and for all, I've replaced the
coolant, but I think it probably needs a good power rinse, the
tools I have, and you really can only do that by removing the bottom
radiator hose, where the thermostat is. OK, well, that'll wait for
summer, which shouldn't be too far off.
Get your cook on!
Kind
of enjoy the advent of spring - suddenly, light gets up earlier, and it
gets dark later, as if someone turned the switch. The grass is growing
like wildfire, so a couple of days of sun and the mower will be
awakened. I've got a fair amount of stuff on, admittedly nothing too
important, and hopefully I can soon begin to exercise my drone
(here still in its box, but I've gotten the spare propellors,
undercarriage, spare batteries, and yes, that is an FAA registration
sticker, registration now mandatory). I am, as the thing has live streaming capability, especially interested in its surveillance capabilities - the stuff you see on TV is (presumably) mostly shot with high end drones
flown by professionals, and I just want to find out how hard it is to
learn that stuff. I tried to find a higher resolution Android phone, but
discovered the pre-paid T-Mobile handsets that used to be available at
Wal-Mart and Best Buy are no more, they've pulled all that back into the
T-Mobile brand stores. I've actually not gone to see what the company
store in Bellevue has to offer - actually, I am probably going down
there tomorrow, so perhaps I should swing by them.
The key is under the mat
I
didn't intentionally get the European version, it was on sale at a home
appliance store near my sister's in Amsterdam, and more or less on
impulse I thought I could try and make it work in the United States,
knowing full well that has a different mains voltage. But eventually I
found a converter (not a transformer) that actually works rather well,
sold by Quick220, here
- when I say "well", I've been using the unit since at least 2010,
including as the power supply on a large 230VAC 20AMP air conditioner,
without any problems. At the same wattage, the European pressure washer
delivers twice the effective pressure (a function of the PSI combined
with water flow) as the same brand American pressure washer does - ah,
took a bit of Googling, but here is the difference: the American Kärcher
model delivers 1.2 gallons per minute, the European one 1.6 GPM. That
is the price we pay, in America, for the antiquated electrical system
and prewar regulations we've never been able to update to "modern
times". I must admit to being lazy, over the winter, and taking the car
through the car wash - the local Mr. Kleen 76 actually does an excellent
job, for my $9. But it is time to get the winter crud out of the nooks
and crannies. Up here in the Pacific Northwest, leave a car out in the
wind and weather, and soon you'll have moss growing on the rubber, I kid
you not.
I don't know if it is the advent of Spring, my slowly improving
financials, some small successes in maintaining things and reparing
things and figuring out some moderately complicated webthings, but my
life appears to be brightening up a little bit. Of course, coming
out of hibernation, getting the first mow of the year in the can, and
finding I can weather some necessary (actually, mandatory) expenses
without going completely bankrupt all helps. The new credit card has let
me restructure my outgoings, and reprogram my financial software so I
have more control and a better alert facility, and getting a line of
credit, after years of not having one, meant I can push some expenses a
month out, which, in a month where I have some additional expenses, is a
Godsend. It isn't that I didn't have that in my savings, but after the
2008 crash I've become paranoid about running down my reserves, I
have never been so close to bankruptcy - or if I had, I wasn't aware of
it, and now I am. Still shaking in my boots, as it were.
While my bank sent me a credit rating warning with the welcome letter
from a credit card division VP, they did give me a "full" normal Visa
account, with a decent line of credit, and all of the reward and benefit
bells and whistles, it wasn't one of the horrendous credit cards
that you get from the banks that operate at the bottom end of the
market. Those are cards you have to pay "membership fees" to, with
horrendous loan percentages, mine has a 0% APR until well into next
year. I expect I got lucky, if that's the right term, because I have
been with my bank for many years - I think I opened my account with them
when the corporation moved me to Washington, D.C., and it turned out my
bank in New York had no branches in Virginia. Never having put a
foot wrong with them, and having direct deposit into that account from
day one, I guess I came up a notch or two above where I might have been
if I had been a new customer. So, as you can never predict how your
finances may go, make sure you have a good "clean" relationship with
your bank. In fact, my previous bank in New York once allowed the State
of New York to put a lien on my account despite the fact I was no longer
living in the state, and didn't even call me when that happened, with
the NY State Department of Taxation claiming state income tax even
though I was no longer living in New York and not being paid there. You
can imagine, even though the lien was lifted, that this was a good
reason for me to change banks - good, in hindsight, because those things
always sit on your record with financial institutions, and never go
away. Lucky, too, that my mortgage, which I successfully negotiated a
Deed-in-Lieu for, was with my old bank, and not with the new. Phew. Who
knew.
It is true what they say about fat
Watching a BBC program about obesity and the NHS
(national health service) it occurred to me that the recent increase in
weight I am lifting comfortably means that, for the first time, I have,
harum, hard evidence that my weight gain has been caused by increased
muscle mass. This may sound crazy, but I really did not know with
certainty whether my weight gain was due to food or exercise, or a
combination of both. Let's see - I started the gym on January 19, 2015, when my health insurer added the Silver Sneakers
program to my policy. At that point my main exercise was walking, and I
then weighed 196 lbs, up from about 180 in 2012, when I still had five
acres of woods in Virginia to maintain. By October of 2015, I was down
to 174 lbs, working out more or less to the max my joints would allow,
which means stopping at a point where a particular joint began to hurt.
I've lived with my arthritis since about 24, so am well acquainted with
the injuries that result when you push it, having had to "push it" often
enough while pursuing my career. After that, still on a regime of five
gym visits a week, my weight had slowly begun to creep up again, kind of
alongside an improvement in my general condition, until I hit 190 last
November. And there it stayed - seemingly, for my current exercise level
and muscle mass, my "ideal weight". When I look at the increase in
weight I lift and pull, an increase that happened very gradually, over
time, and the fact I no longer have the aches and pains I had
earlier on, my guess is that the weight increase is mostly muscle, a
change in body composition. I can see in the mirror I've got muscles
where I didn't have them before, and some appear to have gotten bigger.
But when I suddenly lifted more weight than I ever had before,
inadvertently, last weekend, it kind of dawned on me I should not worry
about the weight increase. Confused? Join the club! There are the itches
you can't scratch, you try something, and then see if if does anything,
over time. Yes, I've increased weights very gradually, and religiously
restrict my workouts to half an hour, but that clearly simply means
results get there more gradually, they do get there. All in all, I think
diet and exercise work well for me, but the metabolism scientists that
say you can expect to gain weight back once you seriously start to work
out, are absolutely right. I can absolutely vouch for what some
scientific publications tell you - if I eat just one meal a day, I lose
weight. If I eat two meals a day, I gain weight. It is as simple
as that, but I've noticed I now get hungry in the morning, that's new, I
never ate breakfast since, oh, the early 1990s, when my first bout in
the gym (thoughtfully provided by my employer, in the research lab in
White Plains, NY) began. I find that maintaining a vitals spreadsheet on
a daily basis helps me, but then I've always believed in tracking and
calendars and stuff.
Royally pissed off by Skype and Microsoft, I was unable to change the
credit card I was using to pay for my international calls, because Skype
suddenly decided I could not even access my account through their
website, something now mandatory to make certain changes, unless I gave
them my date of birth. I don't know that I need to give that to a
telecommunications provider I've been using more or less since it was
invented, so I left tweets and a Facebook complaint (Skype doesn't even
have a "proper" Facebook page) that got no responses of any kind. Then
yesterday, as I was in the middle of upconverting a second Windows 10 PC
to Windows 10 Creator, I decided to try again, after telling Windows
that no, I did not want to use their built in Skype, and suddenly they
no longer ask for the DOB. I have well understood Windows is now all
about data collection, but honestly, Microsoft, the big data fad will go
away again, once you all understand that data does not mean sales.
Gathering information and then manipulating a person into doing
something they had not intended won't work in the long run, and
gathering information and then predicting a person's behaviour isn't
going to do much either, or Donald Trump would not be in the White
House. You really need to understand, Satya Nadella, that selling
requires you to make or have a product. Creating a methodology and then
dreaming people will pay you to use that is large scale folly. Musk had
to create a car before he could develop the sales method he now uses,
and that car had to be different, and work. Bezos had to have products
people needed (not: wanted) before he could build his system, and he
doesn't sell on Ebay, he rolled his own. Both began with products,
Microsoft, and you discontinue products more than you support them. They
also took the things they created to sell their products, and started
selling those too. I save money by buying from Amazon, and get brilliant
customer service. Microsoft doesn't even respond to a simple tweet from
a paying customer, and Windows expert. You're losing it, peeps. It is
nice you put Cloud ads on TV, but Cloud doesn't do anything, it is a
tool...
It is called Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
Anyway.
Dental surgery in the morning, my dentist, as I have had osteoporosis
and was on Fosamax for a long time, doesn't want to take the risk of
damaging my bone structure, so he sent me to an oral and maxillofacial
surgeon. Are we approving medication, under commercial and social
pressure, too quickly? Fosamax and the like weren't known for causing
skeletal damage, when they were approved, and even years later, when I
heard about it and declined my Washington, D.C., dentist's offer of
implants, we still weren't sure whether all that was real. By now,
medical science has researched that osteonecrosis of the jaw is a rare
but not non-existent side effect, and as I stopped taking the medication
in 2011, and my rheumatologist kept a close eye on my bone density and
other skeletal symptoms, and the surgeon involved, who did a full 3D
scan of my jaw, thinks there is little risk - there is never no risk, of course..
I was going to be all happy and gushing that I had, without any pain
complaints, survived over three weeks since my last Humira shot, this
because skipping a shot would help my immune system cope better
with the aftermath of the dental surgery I had earlier in the week. But
that was before I went out and, the weather being cooperative, tried the
new weedwhacker I just bought. Electric, it does not weigh much, but
just the little bit of spine bending at the pelvis joins I needed to do
hurt like a banshee. So I have my answer as to whether or not I can
reduce my Humira biweekly shot frequency - NOT! It is something I
never tried, but this was kinda force majeure, and if all is well with
my tooth socket by Sunday, hop goes the needle. At least I got to try -
no, the pain does not bother me that much, been there, done that. Hard
to imagine that before they invented biologics, it was like this all the
time. Bit scary, too, but what can you do.
Having said that, as I write this it is the fourth day after my dental
surgery, and I am amazed I've had no pain, no swelling, and little
discomfort. Dr. Heldridge
had shown me the 3D scan of my jaw and the offending molar, with three
well spread out roots firmly embedded in the jawbone, scary, and I did
not expect to get off this scot-free, but, either I got lucky, or
Heldridge is a magician, probably the latter. Seriously, uneventful,
some aftereffects from the anesthesia, but I absolutely don't feel I've had anything amputated. Good show.
The demise of the mouse button
The weather keeps improving, temps are hitting the 60's on sunny days,
so I am getting as much "out" time in as I can. C. amusingly called my
electric $30 weed whacker
a "disposable", and I guess, in many ways, it is. The old weed whacker
had given up, I rebuilt that a couple of years ago, but there isn't that
much border to maintain that we need a gas powered variety. Those
generally start at around $90, anyway, so if this electric gizmo lasts
more than 3 years, it is cheaper. I've certainly got plenty of other
outdoor stuff to get on with, and I am dying to give the car a good wash
'n wax, the car wash does a good job, but my pressure washer does
better, and I need to clean the cooling system, radiators, as well. The
Durango has a somewhat convoluted cooling assembly in front of
the V-8, with an A/C heat exchanger mounted right in front of the
radiator, and a bit of winter will clog and dirty those vents, which in
turn give on two fan assemblies and the belt drive mechanism, time for
the pressure washer, and a liberal dose of pulley cleaner spray, with
the belt off. Later on, I'll give her an extra oil change, and then the
coolant needs replacing, I'll put a new lower radiator hose in, and a
lower temperature thermostat, which should enable me to give the
engine's cooling channels a really thorough flush, I've had the tools to
do that lying around for a year already. Big job, but it is necessary,
the car has run a bit hot during summer, she's not a spring chicken any
more. Having said that, if you read my comments below, March 26 and
April 3rd, where I replace, first, the Trottle Position Sensor, and then
the Idle Air Controller - the picture on the left has the TPS sitting
above the IAC, to the right of the Throttle Body, with the air intake
valve closed - the engine has really perked up since I followed advice
in some of the Dodge forums, and replaced those components, combining
that with a thorough cleaning of the throttle body itself, and the
regular maintenance, oil and oil filter change, and air filter cleaning
(my aftermarket high flow airfilter isn't the replaceable kind).
Additionally, I ran a dose of Lucas upper cylinder cleaner / lubricant
through the fuel system, something I do every few months. As of when I
write this, about three weeks after the repairs, the Durango is running
great, all of the past symptoms - almost stalling, irregular and rough
idle, "hiccuping" when trying to accelerate - have gone away. The reason
that took a while to conclude is that the ECM (a.k.a. ECU), the
Engine Control Module, needs to be reset when making changes to the
engine configuration - and replacing two electro-mechanical components
and increasing the airflow into the engine certainly qualify as
"configuration changes". I noticed, before I replaced the throttle
controller and cleaned the throttle body, that the throttle pulley,
which connects to the throttle pedal, was a little stiff, and now that
all that has been cleaned and the TPS replaced, it rotates without
resistance. The ECM, however, "learns" the engine's characteristics, not
to mention your drivestyle, over a period of time, and so replacing
components in the fuel delivery system may have a gradual, rather than
immediate, effect - and you probably should put some local as well as higway miles on the car while the ECM is learning.
Over the past year or so, I've had comments from my primary care doctor about my thyroid cancer,
stating that she did not understand why I contracted that, I "do not
fit the pattern". Didn't ask what that pattern is, but that reminded me
thyroid cancer is now one of the "accepted" ailments consequential to
presence at Ground Zero on or after 9/11. And that caused me to talk to
my endocrinologist, who originally is from New York, but hadn't heard,
but he then talked to a former colleague at Memorial Sloan Kettering in
Manhattan, who had, and between them it became clear there might be a
link to my 2010 cancer diagnosis and -treatment and my presence in NYC
and at Ground Zero - I was, after all, spending much of my time
in Manhattan and downtown, for some eight months, guiding network
recovery activities.
Like most of my peers and colleagues "who were there" I don't talk about
9/11 much. We don't need to talk to each other, since we were all
there, and talking about it to others is a futile exercise, it isn't
really possible to explain all of what happened, and what you went
through, and I apologize for the cliché, but "you had to be there".
Earlier in the year, once I decided to find out if I was in any survivor / victim
category, I tried to find attourneys specializing in 9/11, but wasn't
very successful - the one firm I found returned a call after 6(!) weeks,
and the person I spoke to wasn't a very astute English speaker. But
then, last week, I inadvertently did a search for something I can't even
remember, and ended up with several websites that had references to
9/11, the Zadroga Act, and other things I had been looking for but not
found. And that led to a single call to one specialized legal firm, and
before I knew it I was speaking to a partner. That does mean finding a
lot of information for the legal eagles, speaking to former colleagues
I've not spoken to in years, and remembering all that stuff I had kind buried deep,
it was a horrendous experience, especially since I ended up spending
some eight months working on recovery and repair of our networks, both
in downtown Manhattan and at the Pentagon. It was a time where I could
not "get away from it", the only time off I took was a week in December,
to bury a relative in The Netherlands.
Having received an assessment and registration package from the
attorneys, now I get to dig back in my files and in my memory - and 9/11
is not something I like to think about, I to this day still turn off TV
memorial programming and documentaries. Many now retired, I am going to
have to dig through LinkedIn to find those I worked with, back then,
folks who worked for me, colleagues - one of whom headed downtown and
didn't surface for two weeks, he was handing out gas masks and mouth
protection to people who mostly didn't want to bother with that - and
others involved, as I was in bringing the networks back up and Wall Street
back "on the air". And I guess I get to call Verizon HR, as an
endocrinologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan
said "they know all about this". Phew. This is hard. It even took me an
extra day to post this picture of one of the brochures the lawyers in
Manhattan just FedExed to me, together with a pile of letters and forms
and declarations. Time to pay the piper.
The hacking is nigh on ubiquitous
Even cooking you have to figure out again
The NuWave pressure cooker
I am learning to cook with - see April 16, below - is new, in that I
have never used one on an induction cooker, and I find that the recipes
posted on the internet for pressure cookers often just aren't right.
Basmati rice is a point in fact - three to six minutes, I read, and
"leave the cooker to lose pressure", which it does when it cools down,
but, at least for cooking rice "al dente", which is what I like, that
simply is too long.
Of all the cards I've held, over the years, my Macy's
store card I've probably had the longest, and then Bloomberg thinks
they're not doing so well. I've mostly bought my clothes there, ever
since living in Manhattan, and periodically I get a bunch of
discount coupons that I mostly don't use, but this month, needing a new
pair of running shoes, I succumbed. Wrong. There are now store-in-store
contraptions at Macy's, and they do not honour Macy's own coupons
while they're using Macy's payment system and accept Macy's charge- and
credit cards. Macy's, if you want to know why you're losing customers,
there's a pointer: cheating (because I am sure you could cut a different
deal) is not going to cut it. Like Sears, Macy's was once the Bee's
Knees, in retail, and if you're not getting the foot traffic at the mall
you need to get inventive. Letting your customers find out they can't
use your coupons in your own store is not "inventive". It's stoopid.
It's the flipping discounts that keep people coming back, even if
they're only half real, and if these are now "pretend" too, wot you got
left?
For years, I had a savings account I didn't really use, because a bank
employee, when I moved my account from Virginia to Washington State,
said if I had one, and auto-transferred funds every month, I would not
pay bank charges. Turns out that was not entirely true - I didn't pay
charges on the savings account, but the deposit account was charge free
anyway. I didn't discover that until I went over the whole kit and
kaboodle, the other day, and a kind banking support phone person
confirmed that today. Since I have a savings account elsewhere, I was
able to close this.. Lesson: periodically revisit everything, and look
at the T&C's, because you never know how you can further simplify
your life. I suppose I fell prey to one of those "unnecessary account"
schemes that some banks have been employing, as I really neither wanted
nor needed this savings account, at the time. Savings accounts, at any
rate, have little value, these days - there is little interest, and
you're just as well off sticking spare cash in a trading account, and
buy some stock when you have enough accumulated. You can easily transfer
cash in and out, but without ATM or front office access, your savings
are less likely to "evaporate".
Malware is often fake
I
can't really comment exhaustively on the wide ranging malware attack
reported recently, as I don't know enough about it. Much detail about
how this worked, and what types of systems were infiltrated, has not
been made public, and the fact someone found a "kill switch" -
apparently by buying a domain that the ransomware needed to connect to
before activating - is puzzling, to say the least. If the ransomware
needed that domain to be accessible, it would have been active, and then
the researcher would not have been able to buy it, unless he did
something illegal, or unless the miscreants were truly stupid, and set
their software for a target they didn't have control over. But you don't
need a domain for a target, you can just use an IP address, and that
can be eay to set up, so... Anyway, if you ever do get hit with
ransomware, you do not immediately need to panic, that can come later.
Most ransomware is fake,
and will only do anything to your system if you call the number they
give you, or access the website they want you to use to pay, or click on
anything at all on your screen.
All
the more reason, then, to examine what we do, and why we do it. In my
last blog entry, below, I railed against parents using outdated
standards for their children, not analyzing what has changed since they
were young, and this morning, when I normally snack because I want to
postpone eating because of weight control - I stopped eating breakfast
in the 1990's because medication was making me gain weight, or so I
thought - I gave in to my appetite, and had breakfast. But not what you
probably would normally call "breakfast", whose purpose is really lost
in the mist of time, but a piece of raw tuna - in fact, the very piece
you see to the right, here. I switched to raw tuna from fish oil a while
ago, to maintain a supply of Omega-3 in my diet, a local supermarket
has prepackaged pieces of raw tuna in the freezer, they are delicious - I
am a Sashimi aficionado - and as I understand it full of goodness, for
as long as you don't overdo it because of the mercury potential. You're
better off with the frozen tuna, because "raw tuna" at the fish counter
is normally ex-frozen tuna, and you don't know how they do that, there
are still plenty of people who don't understand safely defrosting fish is not
putting the package in warm water. Better still, raw tuna is normally
very safe to eat - these chunks come from the inside of the fish, which
is in a clean condition without parasites, and if you didn't know, all
tuna caught out in the oceans is frozen solid immediately after
catching, which kills any potential parasites, it is actually bulk sold
frozen, cut frozen, packaged frozen and kept and delivered frozen.
Traditionally, sashimi grade tuna is cleaned on board ship, and kept at
-60° Fahrenheit, or it won't be that nice red, let alone free of
parasites. At the fish counter, there normally isn't any such thing as
"raw tuna", the fish are simply too large and must be transported over
distances that are too great for tuna to be kept "fresh". In my case, if
you want the entire story, I unwrap the frozen tuna from its
shrinkwrap, wrap it in kitchen paper, and put that in a closed container
in the refrigerator to thaw, which normally takes 6 or 8 hours. The
remaining blood drains into the kitchen paper - easy to see when you
open the container - and, hey presto! - a delicious chunk of raw tuna.
To your left, a traditional
Japanese breakfast as I found it at Tokyo's Narita Airport during a
long layover - traditional, non processed food. Likely much healthier
than processed breakfast cereal with processed milk, or the "full
English" I found at London's Heathrow Airport, another island people
gone in a completely different direction. I should probably be honest
and tell you I have twice, in my life, booked a long distance flight so I
had to change planes at Heathrow just for that breakfast, but do please
understand ten years living in London will do that to you... So this is
how we've traditionally coped with the world - habit forming,
repetitive behaviour, accordance with the norm, nothing to step out of
line, predictability, salary men. Now, we have to ask ourselves why we
suddenly seem to have an overabundance of dementia and Alzheimer's, and
have all but declared those to be at epidemic stage. I am paying
attention to this as, while aging, I am cognizant of the dementia risk,
and for some time have been developing methods to gauge my mental
abilities, and any risks I might perceive for these "ailments". I am "in
a good place" in that I have had years of professional involvement with
risk management, complete with exposure to our spectacular failures in
risk management, like 9/11. I don't know how I got so lucky to be
"there" and end up a "recovery worker", but there it is, and it's taught
me a hell of a lot.
I don't know how scared you are of "ransomware" and "phishing", you
should most certainly understand it hits hundreds of thousands of
people, worldwide, day in day out, and can have pretty
devastating consequences for your data. By that I don't means the
pictures of the grandkids - they weren't any more secure on your
computer than they were in that shoebox, we tend to forget how bad we
are at securing our possessions. But your tax returns, your "My Money"
files - I have, by now, in just one piece of software, every financial
transaction in my life (and some of at least one ex) since 1998 in one
database - and other sort of important files, like your electronic tax
returns, need protecting. If I seem callous about the emotional value of
things, I 'pollygize - I've seen grandpappies build playrooms in their
new home for the grandkids - only to have the grandkids not turn up,
ever - concentrate on what is important and on what you can control,
don't build failure into your life.
Looking at the Tiger Woods story,
I can't tell you what, if anything, went wrong in his life, but I am so
happy I did not have that back surgery - which would have reconstructed
some of my lower vertebrae - he apparently had... It looks to me his
play didn't "collapse" until after the surgery, and I had been
struggling with back pain for some time, when I decided to have that
surgery, by a renowned spinal surgeon in the Washington, D.C., area.
There were good reasons, too, in my case, I had damaged cartilage, some
calcification in the lumbar region, spinal damage, pelvic damage, the
former because of an immune condition, the latter because of an old, and
serious, car accident, so the indicators were there, and my
rheumatologist had no objections. We'd tried everything, I'd even had a
series of epidural steroid injections, the ones you get with a live scan
going as the needle goes in between the vertebrae, and the primary
reason I postponed the scheduled surgery was that I suffered a rheumatic
flare-up, which would have made it impossible for me to properly heal,
with physical therapy and all that. Then, when the flare subsided, my
primary care physician, during a routine annual checkup, noticed a
swollen thyroid, and suddenly I had something infinitely more serious
than back pain. All I am saying - and I am not enough of an expert to
have any kind of an opinion about Mr. Woods' back - is that medication,
the lumbar shots (perhaps) and the gym made my spine pain free and
functioning just fine - well, almost, there are a few things I don't
want to do because they hurt, but no lasting discomfort or disability,
and I lift weights with the best of them. It is just that every time I
read about Mr. Woods' back surgeries I can't help but wonder if those
did him in. If you consider I was advised strenuously to have the
reconstructive surgery, I had every medical reason on the planet, and
here I am, no surgery, spine is fine, go figure. But as I said, I am not
an expert, and I'll never know what would have happened if I'd had the
surgery.
So, back up. I haven't really written much about backing up, knowing
that some folks back up, and others don't, but perhaps some of you, with
this ransomware scare, will pay a little bit of attention, this time. I
am going to bore you, though, and add the security precautions I take -
I am a long time computer scientist, and was both in charge of data
security in large Verizon subsidiaries, and responsible for Federal
compliance with respect to the Telecommunications Act. In order to do
all that, I've had to learn every aspect of security technology there
is, from data connectivity and network equipment to staff surveillance
and router programming. So if anybody knows this crap, dudes and
dudettes, it is me. And I am going to have to take you through it step
by step, I have seen how a lot of folks undo their own security, and will tell you about them (no names, though, sorry..).
If you still have that old style household, where there is a computer
everybody uses, and then some members of the family have their own PCs
or devices, don't. Files and information may end up where you can't find
them, or where they are at risk because of something somebody else
does, and there isn't a point to this. Years ago, when I set up IT
divisions for new Verizon subsidiaries, I began to issue laptops to all staff,
including secretaries and janitors and CEOs, making everybody
responsible for their own data security, and everybody required to go to
the help desk if they had an issue. That, the IT help desk, you need to
have at your house too - and no, that isn't the older know-it-all who
thinks Google will let him become a doctor, it is whoever in the house
is willing to go to the local community college and take the basic
computer course - even town councils offer those, these days. The days
when you could go to the store, get a PC, and learn as you went along,
are essentially over - it isn't that computers have changed that much,
it is that our use of them has changed, our lives depend on these
things, even if you did not switch over to computerized record keeping
as early as I did - 1978 - even if you somehow avoided AOL, by now
Facebook must have got you, and you won't get to talk to the grandkids
much if you haven't got Instagram. And while you can store things
in "the Cloud", that isn't a two way street - if you're on an Apple
device, you wouldn't be able to recover many of your records from the
Apple cloud using a Windows device, and vice versa, the manufacturers
want to tie you down, and they don't particularly care about
"compatibility". Their primary concern is to tie you down in their
"ecosystem", now not even because they want to make sure you continue as
their customer, but to collect as much data as they can.
So you're caught between a rock and a hard place - store your stuff in
the cloud, and your provider will read and parse it, store it on your PC
and it may get hijacked, or the disk could go South. And backing up to
prevent ransomware won't help you unless you back up every day,
and keep several of the aged backups, sometimes the virus has been in
your files for days before it activates. And even if you do back up,
have you made sure your backup software will still be available and
functioning four years from now?
I have one backup application that stores backups in a compressed
encrypted password protected format, in zip archives, which means that
even if the software weren't available I could still find - laboriously -
a file, and I even could resurrect an entire machine, although that
might take days. So - and think about doing some of this - I have
backups in three different formats. I've been in situations where the
Microsoft Windows image backup would not restore, this because of the
software theft security Microsoft builds in, and I was able to - at the
cost of time - restore from a different backup format. That is
exactly why I do that, got wise over time, and so, in this instance,
even if one backup would have been hit by ransomware, the other would
not. Yes, it takes time, is hard work, but when I read how many
professionals have lost years of data - why would you risk that? Do you
have health insurance? A fire extinguisher? A first aid kit? Then why
not make sure you've got your customer names and addresses backed up?
Let me put it this way - if you don't routinely check your tire
pressure, you need to work on your life skills. If you don't caulk your
bathroom tiles, your bathroom will end up unusable, and co$t. For no
reason. I sometimes think I am overdoing it, and then I see this
ransomware attack hit the British NHS, and immediately feel justified
"overdoing it".
So what I'd like you to do is make a short list:
Where is your data now?
How important is your data to your future?
Is your data space shared with anyone?
What would the cost of your data loss be? (time and money!!)
When is the last time you learned new tricks?
It is especially important to spend a couple of hours going through your
hard disk and finding out if you really don't have anything on there
you would have a hard time without. Most people accumulate stuff, over
time, they forget they have, and haven't copied.
I have a hard time believing these folks we've been told about got "hit
hard" by the ransomware really did not have backups. I have a hard time
believing the ransomware was more or less accidentally propagated
- if the statistics are correct, this worm used a propagation method
we've not seen used before, this stuff happens all the time, but not at
this scale. I continue to think (but can't prove) that much of this is
overhyped scareware, ably assisted by scaremongering press. The
propagation of fake news, today, is such that an astute operator can
make thousands believe things that are impossible - only the other day I
receive a kind warning from a friend about a phishing attack that had
been reported in France a year before, and was complete nonsense, and
patently impossible. It took me ten minutes to find the original (fake)
source - but folks will "help" by reporting it as true, without checking
or asking an expert. It is time consuming, scary, and as bad and
counterproductive as chain letters - remember those? - used to be. But a
chain letter had to go through a post office, and so could be
traced - today, the post office is automated so the tracking can be
faked. No, I don't have a solution either, and know from experience
folks won't make the effort to protect themselves.
May 21, 2017: It is all up in the air
Keywords: Boeing, Paul Allen, Heritage Flight, Paine Field, Snohomish County Regional Airport, B-25 Mitchell, Aviation Day
Aviation
Days are held all over the country, but just up here is Paine Field,
smack in the middle of Boeing's Everett, WA, plant, where Microsoft
co-founder Paul Allen keeps his collection of rare aircraft, many still
flying. The weather being brilliant, I spent a few hours trying to get a
nice shot of something, I am still processing the photography and the
video. The attack bomber in the middle is a B-25 Mitchell Model J,
special to me in that my cousin Teddy, who passed away in Indonesia in
2010, where he had retired (he was born in the Dutch colonies before the
war, and served with our Fleet Air Arm fighting the Japanese), flew one
just like that on D-Day, in the 320 (Netherlands) Squadron of the RAF,
earning a DFC and the French Légion d'Honneur. Two of these are based
at Paine Field, and whenever I hear their engines overhead, I can't help
but think of Ted, who I used to go visit when I was a teen, at the
Katwijk Naval Base where he was stationed after the war. This shot came
out rather nicely, methinks, at the top is a British Hurricane, to the
left a P-51 Mustang.
June 1, 2017: Tiger Woods may just have the wrong doctor
Keywords: Manchester, Caliphate, AI, AlphaGo, Tiger Woods, Ariana Grande, Seagate, HP Elitebook
Barracudas
I
suppose among the few issues I have remaining in my computing
environment is to see if I can get the drive cloning business sorted -
at some point Acronis' cloning software would fail with a spurious
error, something I have attributed to the HP Tools security package I
installed. It allows Windows logins to be recognized by the HP Elitebook
BIOS - good security perhaps, but in my view a little bit over the top.
Hmm.. thinking about it, I have not tested data recovery from Windows'
Image Backup, something I ought to perhaps do, I've always done that in
the past. Once you find it won't work, when you need it (it happens) the
consequences can be horrendous. I had been looking at getting another 2
terabyte internal hard disk (there's one in this Elitebook) so I would
have a complete duplicate setup, perhaps that would be a good moment to
restore this load onto a new drive. They're coming down in price - right
now the Seagate Barracuda costs only $79.99 - the Seagate Spinpoint, the 2TB drive I bought only a year ago, was then $104.
Manchester, England
IT is not there to help you
I
criticized Ariana Grande for hightailing it home, just when her fans
needed her most, but watching this 23 year old from Boca roaring back
into Manchester, this weekend, with a truly amazing show - which
was organized and put together in an exemplary manner, this being live,
streamed worldwide, with a local 50,000 strong audience - I can only tip
my hat at this young lady. I'd never heard her sing, but - oops, from
listening to her I'd have her of Hispanic stock, but Wikipedia tells me
she's Italian American, from New York. Honestly, putting this type of
show together, broadcasting it live, not a playback in sight, it was
truly amazing. There weren't my type of artists, but I am glad I watched
the whole three hours live on my illicit BBC feed, including the tens
of thousands of kids in the audience. I sometimes think my generation is
leaving the kids a pretty messed up place, but then I watch these -
kids - and their taking control gives me hope. It really does. If a 23
year old can energize this many people inside of a week, we don't need
to worry about the hate-beards. They're toast. We are, perhaps, seeing
them in their death throes. Miley Cirus, too, impressed the heck out of
me, she has come a long way from the Disney Channel, I guess it is a
business you either grow up fast in, or self-destruct. I spent some time
in that business, way back when, in Amsterdam, what can I tell you, the
adults are getting younger. By the way, American broadcast networks,
this show was an enormous missed opportunity to woe a new young
adience - ABC put a 1 hour edited version on at 10pm, you can't pre-empt
all these commercial programs. We're not getting it, we are losing
touch with the people supposed to pay the bills and buy the products.
All an American producer would have to do is watch the audience - those
are the future adults you're telling they don't matter enough to let
them participate in real time. 23 year olds are giving the marching
orders, guys, and you're not listening. Whole new generation on the war
path.
If you still think of England as the country with unarmed Bobby's,
that's done and dusted. The London Bridge attack response had the
attackers killed by armed officers eight minutes after the initial
emergency call, when 8 officers fired 50 rounds. That's shoot to kill,
and actually a better armed response than you'll find in most other
places on the planet. The Metropolitan Police, years ago, instructed
their officers that a potential bomber must not be challenged, but
immediately shot in the head, and started training firearms officers to
that effect. The London Bridge assailants wore fake explosives vests,
and guess what - died on the spot. Did they insure they would not be
taken alive? Did they want to make sure they couldn't take disabling
shots to the body, make it all even harder than it was already? Sad to
see a way of life destroyed, but there it is. We need to urgently
figure out how we've invited the murderers to share our daily bread.
And stop talking about "this is not our Islam". If you say that, you
clearly don't understand your religion, and your co-believers. You
created this problem, you let it fester, now you need to help solve it.
Please understand that there aren't any suicide bomber Lutherans,
Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Jesuits, what have you. Just Muslims. Think
about that. Think. Learn.
Pieces of Amazon
No, that's just the SUV sitting in the street, as a construction
company is putting a new garage door in. I took a picture of that, and
then this, and kind of liked the shot, the colours, reminded me I should
rotate the wheels. I did pressure wash the radiator and the A/C heat
exchanger and the front of the engine with belt and pulleys, as I do
every spring, which neighbour G. thought a bit strange, but he's got one
of those humongous diesel trucks with TWO radiators, and it is through
the front, after all, that all of the crap blows in, especiallly since I
levered the back end of the hood up an inch, which greatly improved the
air flow under there.
I only belatedly realized, the other day, that after my hospital appointments
downtown, picking up a bite to eat there, before heading home, would
probably get me better food at a lower price, considering Seattle is
funny in that it shuts down after 6, pretty much, and so these
restaurants and takeaway places have to compete on both quality and
price in a very limited timeframe. I am not used to this, in both NYC
and the D.C. area business starts early, and shuts late - on my way to a
7am doctor's appointment, I'd come off the HOV at 6am, and have
breakfast at a Starbucks that opens at 5am. That's different from Seattle in so many ways... Anyway, I grabbed a medium beef noodle soup at Pho Saigon,
$8.63 including tax. The place is Vietnamese enough it has an altar,
and the flavour is "all there", so to speak. TG I get to go back there
on Monday, I just realized.
Mayday
I have a hard time disconnecting the goings-on in England from each other - terrorism, by mostly indigenous jihadis,
then a council estate, subsidized housing for low income folks, goes up
like a torch. I am really not qualified to form an opinion, something
you're especially likely to do if you've lived in a country, save to say
that Britain came into the European Union as the poor cousin,
with a somewhat backward society in somewhat dilapidated circumstances,
and I can't say I am seeing what they're hoping to gain by leaving the
EU, where living standards and health standards and safety standards
continue to be higher than those in the UK. I suppose the divorce was
always on the cards, from when the UK decided not to adopt the Euro, but
I have my doubts the British know where they're going. In many ways,
Donald Trump's election was weird, but Brexit is on another planet.
Though, knowing the British as I do, it isn't unexplainable. After all,
like the United States, Britain does not have high speed trains. They
could never get the technology working reliably, while we lacked the
political will, and so, the entire world now buys and uses Japanese,
German and French technology. It reminds me of going overseas for (then)
NYNEX, and having to explain to my American overlords there wasn't
anyone who wanted American wireless technology - the European version,
GSM, was developed without analog constraints, and based on data
transmission, and that's what everybody wanted. Today, even the
Americans have converted, finding complicated terminology to hide their
failure.
Procrastination Station
I keep reading and watching huge amounts of conjecture about Amazon's
purchase of Whole Foods, and find it hard to believe nobody puts two and
two together. It is simple: Amazon - Bezos - develops technologies.
New, innovative technologies that upend product history and product
design - look at how it started, Amazon sold books and developed an
ebook, complete with reader, networks and infrastructure. Everyone keeps
pointing at Amazon's self service self pay trial supermarket in
Seattle, as if Bezos said that's in any way related to the acquisition
of Whole Foods. He hasn't. Nobody said anything of the sort. In the era
of #fakenews, it is a bit disconcerting to see folks write about
Amazon's new "checkout free" stores, when in fact only one single
trial store, accessible only to Amazon employees, has been set up in
Seattle, likely to experiment with the technology. I doubt any of the
commentators have actually been there - it has an 1,800 square foot
size, which is probably the size of a 7-11, hardly a supermarket, a
regular Trader Joe's supermarket, not the largest, probably measures
some 20,000 square feet. Given that Amazon sells groceries - both as
"shipped" commodities and for "fresh" local delivery in some markets -
experimenting with what is likely a fully automated convenience store
isn't that hard to grasp, especially since Amazon manufactures its own
warehouse robots, and likely supplies the store using its own "Fresh"
service, where the products are catalogued and scanned when they get to
the warehouse anyway. None of it rocket science, and completely not
pointing at any particular business direction. I mentioned 7-11 -
between this trial and Whole Foods, and Amazon Fresh, it looks more like
Bezos is aiming at the convenience market than at anything else - at
consumers willing to pay for convenience, and not your blue collar
Walmart customer, willing to sit in a 20 minute car cueue to get into
the Walmart parking lot. The last Costco I saw built needed significant
road building and reconstruction, from the local authority, that isn't
what Amazon does. Drones? How would you use drones to deliver things to
apartment 23B in big cities? Even if you could get the permits, which
isn't going to happen in my lifetime. All I am saying is that there are
lots of writers and reporters, and apparently few capable of reading
Bezos' mind, or at least conjecture in the right direction.
Thinking about it, after re-reading what I just wrote, I can give you
one reason why the little "Amazon Go" convenience store wouldn't work,
in urban settings: theft. Here in Washington State, ever since
supermarkets were permitted to start selling booze, the theft has been
rampant to the point all supermarkets in the Seattle area have their
booze locked up, and you need an attendant to "liberate" some. I forget
the numbers, but a manager at a Safeway gave me the dollars, couple
years ago, and that was jaw dropping. A supermarket where you could just
load up your cart and walk out would need significant security - the
primary reason why the self-service checkouts have attendants. And theft
is on the rise, both in terms of good, services, entire gangs follow
UPS and FedEx and Postal Service trucks, steal from porches, mailboxes,
CCTV or no CCTV, they keep trying. Common knowledge has it that too much
security makes your store unfriendly, something German chain Aldi
ignores - you can't get a shopping cart at Aldi without unlocking it
with a quarter, and I don't know that that bothers anybody - well, me,
one time, when I had to go back to my car to get a quarter, I stopped
carrying coins years ago.
They still do paper books
I mentioned 1,000 page paperbacks, in my last blog entry - checked the
shelves at the bookstore, but there aren't that many around, it seems -
they're mostly "special editions", like a reprint of "Lord of the
Rings". The "tomes" I read in paperback, in the past, top out
around 500 pages, and regular books I checked are under 400 pages. So it
wasn't unusual I was surprised, I am just curious when and how this
technology - because thinner paperback paper is a new technology, except
in rice- and bible-paper - was introduced. The pages are sometimes hard
to separate, so my guess is it isn't hugely popular. Question is, if
you're a new reader and you haven't had the exposure, does it bother
you? I have, by the way, come across an excellent SF writer, I can't
remember the last time I've become completely absorbed by a story, Jack
mcDevitt, whose research and style of writing and complete adoption of
alien environments have me spellbound. My nighttime reading normally
leads to sleep, but I get into Mr. mcDevitt's stuff
to the point I wake back up when the book falls out of my hand. It's
Harry Potter for grownups, where everything is logical and normal in its
weirdness. Try it. For the first time in years, I've bought another
book by the same author, even before finishing the first. The link above
goes to the book I am reading now, at Amazon.
More oil
Those are my "renewed" old (2005) Oakley "Half Jacket" driving glasses,
which I looked at, the other day, and decided the lenses were too
frayed, at the edges, and the last time I looked at replacement lenses
(a kind shop person had told me they were available) you could only buy
them in multiples (meaning, four sets or so) and they were expensive.
But I had a quick look at their website, and they do now sell them in
single sets, but they're still not cheap, $70, for the base lenses. So I
did another browse at Amazon (where else...) and found the aftermarket
lenses in the picture here, with nosepads and replacement "socks", for
under $30. As you can see, they're a good fit, and much to my amazement
their optical quality and colour correction are excellent, all they do
is (apart from polarization and UV protection) impart a grey scale on
the light, which is (at least on this very sunny day) actually quite
pleasant. Much better than I expected from an aftermarket product. If
the selfie above has shades, those are the "reborn" Oakleys, I certainly
can't afford to replace them with the same brand, but they're designed
to come apart and have the lenses replaced, and they do that well, even
after all these years..
Trumpectomy
Finance on your handheld?
Something I hadn't really figured on, when I finally got my credit back, is that I had my financial software
set up so "perfectly" that the addition of a credit card account
completely destabilized my forecasting. I guess I had gotten too used to
living "out of pocket". I've actually spent quite a few hours redoing
the way I organize my accounts, in my financial software, to get to the
point that I have some forecasting ablity again. It sort of throws up
that credit is a truly dangerous thing, and hard to keep track of,
software packages simply add your available credit to available cash, as
if it is money you have. Why didn't I notice this before? Most likely
because I had so much money coming in, every month, with a couple of
investment accounts added, which you don't really know, from one day to
the other, the value of. Being on the other side of the fence, as it
were, it is an interesting conumdrum, interesting in that I am
determined to make this work, one way or the other. I should probably
mention I love statistics, like spreadsheeting all sorts of useless
data, and finances are really the only thing I spend money on, in terms
of buying software. Most other software I use is either freeware, or
came with one or the other bits of hardware I've bought. One reason I
use financial software is that it downloads my banking data - well, from
my U.S. based accounts, at least, and lets me make electronic payments,
it isn't something I would like to lose. I used to use Turbotax for tax
returns, as well, but the cheaper version I used to use has now been
crippled so badly by Intuit that you have to "upgrade" if you have more
than one source of income. I think that's asinine, so dumped the idiots,
making money by cheating is not my idea of a mutually beneficial
business relationship. I have no problem paying for software, but it has
to do what I need it to do, and I won't let a vendor change the
functionality on me.
Ah. Britain has decided cars on gasoline or diesel can't be sold any more from 2040,
this to combat the ongoing pollution problem. Cars with hybrid drive
trains - to all intents and purposes cars with both an electric and a
mechanical drive train, both powered by gasoline - are exempted.
Say what? Hybrid and electrical cars are going to solve part of
Britain's pollution problem? As a bit of background, hybrid electric
vehicles have been on the market since 1997, some 20 years, during which
period some 12 million of them have been sold, to a large extent partly
subsidized by governments. The effect on automotive pollution, over
that time? Big, Fat Zero. Nothing. Zilch. 0.00%. By comparison, just in
2016, 88.1 million cars of all types were sold worldwide. In the UK, the
hybrid electric vehicle is so popular that the 2016 market share was.... hold on to your hat... 1%. So the British government has decided to combat air pollution by promoting the least popular automotive technology of all time. Affordable electric heavy goods vehicles by 2040? The technology does not exist. Quick rechargeable cheap electric vehicles by 2040? The technology does not exist.
Let me elaborate: there aren't, at the present time, many affordable
vehicles with an alternative drivetrain being produced in volume. The
only car that comes to mind that's available "off the shelf" is the
Nissan Leaf, in production since 2010, 250,000 of which were sold in
2016 (I am duty bound to point out that, in many markets, electric
vehicles are sold with a tax incentive and other perks, and that
makes comparing and sales statistics hard-to-impossible). By comparison,
Ford sold some 70,000 of its economy Focus models in just the UK, in
that same year. The base Focus retails for some 18,000 - the Leaf goes
for $35,000, or double the price.
What I am saying is that cheap alternative-fuel vehicles aren't being
produced and sold, today. I am sure car manufacturers would be able, if
they wanted to, but for whatever reason, they're not making the effort.
The forthcoming "cheap" Tesla, supposedly, will cost the same as the
Leaf, but it is, at this point, not out there, announced but not
available. And to be honest, Tesla isn't a company known for making
cheap stuff, and Tesla nor Musk have any experience or expertise in
cut-throat mass markets, and it definitely isn't doing the trick the
Japanese introduced, many years ago: a cheap but completely kitted base
car, the Tesla Model 3 with basic bells & whistles is rumoured to be
valued closer to $45,000. The orders, I understand, are roaring in -
even though nobody has ever driven one... Road tests by motoring
websites? Tesla "offered rides"... in a $35,000 car fitted with $25,000
worth of extras.
So: despite lots of engineering, and decades of development, the only
way we can provide vehicles for folks-on-a-budget is by sticking a small
gasoline engine in them - the Europeans and the Asians have city
runarounds with 1 liter and 1.2 liter engines that do just fine. There
isn't an alternative fuel that can be produced cheaply enough to
compete, partly because diesel, long the "new" miracle powerplant, now
turns out to be a really heavy polluter, being phased out in all
consumer vehicle markets.
All I am saying is that if a government bases its forecast and future
plans on technologies that do not currently exist, that are not being
developed for the mass market, and that it has no control over, you have
to ask yourself how they're going to make this happen, given that
Britain's pollution isn't caused by polluting cars, but by polluting
drivers. There are too many, in increasingly congested urban areas,
issues that are not being addressed in any plans - again, England will
exempt hybrid vehicles, which run on gas! Yes, I know BMW has said it'll
build electric Mini's in England - but Mini's are fashionable expensive
cars, not runabouts for someone to get groceries in and pick up the
kids from practice. IMHO: not gonna happen. Ah, here we are: the Royal
Mail has a contract for the new Peugeot Partner L2 Electric van: 67HP
electric motor, 106 mile range, and a 552 kg payload. That's the state
of the art, after so many years of development: delivery vans with the
performance they had in the 1970s. Only these "save the environment". Sure.
Microsoft gets harder every week
First time ever I have sold something via Craigslist, I've sort of
studiously stayed away from it due to the security implications. As a
consequence, I didn't know the number of security features they've built
in, to the point that you can use their anonymous email functions, and
kind of take it from there, and walk away if it doesn't "feel good".
Like the bozo asking if something is still for sale half an hour after
you posted it. Long story short, my "spare" A/C went, for the price I
asked for, in six hours, after a river of hagglers. Painless - mind you,
we're in the middle of a heatwave. Now for D's electric lawnmower,
which I fixed up with a new set of lead-acid batteries, but I think I
may wait until the grass starts growing again. Yep - nothing doing, even
though, just checking, Amazon has a cheap Black & Decker 16(!) inch
mower with two 40 volt 2 amp batteries for - dig this - just under
$300. Mine is a 19 inch mulching mower, with all the bells and whitles,
and the new battery pack I just installed is 48 volt 9 amps, letting it
go for $115, if you're interested, I'll take cash, Visa, Mastercard (in
the driveway), or Paypal. The B&D (they actually own Craftsman now)
will maybe mow a postage stamp, the reviews say folks charge one battery
while using the other so they can finish the entire lawn. Of course,
lead-acid batteries need to be maintained, and lithium-ion ones do not,
but the lead-acid at least gives you oompf, and will last much longer.
For summer, the heat is way above what is "normal" for the Puget Sound,
not helped by the smoke coming down from Canadian wildfires, bad enough
they declared a state of emergency up there. Here, it has been around 95
Fahrenheit, a.k.a. 35 Celsius, while a bit down the road the temps
topped 100. I haven't got my heat pump running all day, as the
room is small enough that it makes too much noise, but cooling
everything down ahead of sleep time is definitely better for my sleep. I
must say that by comparison with other portable A/C units, this Edgestar
does very well, especially once it cools down outside, and it sucks
cooler air into the heat exchanger. It says it has 14,000 BTUs, and I
think it actually does, going like the clappers. I got this unit
reconditioned, and it is clear that once I get a proper apartment, all I
will need is a second unit to cover both heating and cooling -
actually, once the housemates are on vacation I can actually try it out
in the living area. But the dual hose design makes all the
difference - the single hose units suck the air you just cooled out of
the room, which makes for a lot less efficiency, and, I think, a lot
more electric waste. It is kind of amusing to think all these units had
single hoses, and once everybody bought one they introduced the dual
hose. Having said that, on a heat pump, in the middle of winter it'll
suck really cold outside air, which isn't great for efficiency. Even so,
these days, heat pumps work very well, and at today's gas prices, are
cheap to run.
Next
week, I have to find a new insurer - the one I am with now is raising
my rates way beyond reasonable, I think they actually use the Verizon
retiree program to hook new customers, and then gouge them. Let's see if
we can do better, I got a good quote, but need to make sure I can use
one specific account with them, cutting my rate by pre-paying six months
out of savings, this is stuff you have to have anyway, never thought of
that, which makes me a bit stupid.
Not yet having posted this, I managed to find myself a new insurer, and a
policy at rates that are pretty close to what I paid before this
encounter with Met Life. I switched because they gave me a better rate
than my then insurer, then started raising my rates bit by bit,
something that had not happened to me for years, you always spend time
getting insurers to lower your rate, so this was, clearly, not
accidental.I got pretty worked up over it, then seriously started
insurance shopping, and it became clear pretty swiftly I should probably
done that sooner, and that the Verizon retiree deal isn't, well, a
"deal" of any kind.
Microsoft now requires a date of birth in order to log into
Skype, a service I have used forever, and who have my credit card on
file. Not going to happen. Complaint filing time. If they really think I
am going to give them my date of birth so I can close my account....
What with the housemates gallivanting around Asia Pacific for a
month I am in a good place to clean and re-organize and repair and
defrost and clean freezers and weed out backyard jungles and what have
you. Additionally, I am testing my Edgestar heat pump to see how much of
the house it is able to cool - not expecting miracles, but really the
only way to check performance is to simply try. Of all of the air
conditioners I have owned, over the years, few were able to do a good
job, and especially the "portable" units were largely anemic, whatever
the commercial blurb may promise. But this works better than expected -
it won't handle the entire house, but is getting pretty close, and I've
now got a kilowatt meter in the power line, so I can see exactly how
much it is consuming. So far, it is big, ugly, and much more efficient
than some of the Asian units I've tried - much to my surprise. From the
look of it, with temperatures still in the '80s, the heat pump
costs less than $60 per month to run, this at $0.1025 per kwh, and that
really is a lot better than I expected. The drawback of heat pumps is
that they're not small (especially not if they're dual-hose units, like
mine), and they use a high airflow, by comparison with cooling-only air
conditioners, so make more noise. But being able to use a single
efficient unit for heating and cooling - pretty good. Especially here in
the Pacific Northwest, where only 30% of households even have A/C,
inefficient is the name of the game, kind of strange - there is abundant
hydro-electric power, but most people heat with gas, which is largely
imported from Canada.
Anyway,
what with the housemates away, I seem to be getting busier, not more
relaxed. Then again, there is plenty of engineering stuff to do - I
managed to resurrect our 1999 Whirlpool freezer, which we all thought
was nigh-on deceased, but as it turned out its auto-defrost
wasn't functioning any more, and once I figured out how that worked -
stunning, working on cleverly engineered "old" technology - I was able
to get it back to normal. We don't do that any more, maintenance on
household equipment, more's the pity, I spent about a week cleaning and
adjusting and replacing bits, this is just stuff I like doing, as an
engineer, you learn from it, and as of yesterday it is sitting in test,
so far so good. The auto-defrost is klugy, but works remarkably well,
having said that, I don't yet have it at the 0° setting it is supposed
to be running at (-20, for the Centipedes). Then, there's a tree to the
side of the house that is growing underneath the foundation, so that
needed to come out, and I could not get the freakin' chainsaw to work.
Well, new spark plug - C. only bought this last year - and now I've got
it going. I am kind of used to trees and chain saws, having owned and
maintained five acres of woods in Virginia, but it did turn out there's a
lot more tree than I bargained for. Still, it's gotta come out, as the
dentist said...
Hmm. I've kind of stopped eating bread - not for any other reason than
reducing my calorie intake. It occurred to me we grow up with bread and
cereals, a cheap and effective way to take in nutritious grains, but
then I thought that if I just eat the stuff I put on bread - like cheese, liverwurst,
that sort of thing - I might actually reduce my caloric intake, apart
from the daily meal I take. That, after all, has grains - I eat either
rice or pasta, potatoes, not so much, cereals, to me, are too expensive,
and generally full of stuff you don't actually need, flavour agents -
for the kids, the flavour agents program their brains to understand that
when something is sweet, it is nutritious food. There is, if you look
at the labels, a lot of stuff in bread that does not need to be there,
like sugar and salt, while cereals, today, fall very heavily on the side
of "processed foods", again, with lots of ingredients that are
nutritionally unnecessary. I many ways, I am tempted to see if I
can think of better products "for the masses", not helped by the way
manufacturers spike the food they sell to the great unwashed masses.
Seriously.
One Trumpectomy a week
Who'd have thunk. I find myself catching up from catching up - while the
housemates were away I caught up on so much maintenance I ignored some
of my "regular" chores. Nothing that couldn't wait, it's just been a
very busy month with back-to-back chores, and lots of research. That's
kinda cool, I suppose, it certainly set me to thinking I have to get my
own space and ability to do things. Don't know how to explain, but there
it is. So, I need to focus. That was the last load of yard waste, in
C's truck, the fifth this month. I truly hadn't a clue there could be so
much growth in a suburban yard. Now to keep the momentum going...
I am not quite clear what this NFL protest is all about. The players
can, because of the First Amendment, protest something bad in society in
public. Never mind the NFL is their employer, they're not at a public
venue - a ballpark is a closed venue you can only get access to if you
pay, and you can't watch the game unless the broadcaster pays either. So
these multi-millionaires, who make 5 or 10 or 20 million dollars a year
protest in their employer's space (the First Amendment specifically
refers to speech in the public space) by kneeling rather than standing
for the national anthem, and they get to their protest by walking
fifteen yards to the field from their locker room, where they have been
transported by non-public transport, at your expense. I don't think they
are, in this protest, protected by the First Amendment, which has been
exempted for speech in commercial circumstances, I think these players
make too much money and I think you, the public, are partly responsible
for giving these men the idea they are more important than they really
are. Maybe they can start kneeling during the commercial breaks? I
cannot believe we are giving "athletes" like these, who spend their
lives ensuring they end up with brain damage, obesity and joint damage,
millions of dollars so they can then appear in car dealership
commercials for vehicles they couldn't even recognize if they saw them
in the parking lot. If one of those oversized overpaid athletes publicly
address the president as "bum", he need say no more to prove he should
learn to spell "civility" en "education" before getting onto a public
forum and teaching kids it is OK to be a moron.
Interesting research!
So how did the wolf turn into a dog? The logical answer would be that a
human household couldn't accomodate an entire wolf family, especially
since the alpha males then would feel compelled to compete with the
human alpha males for control. There must (purely my conjecture) have
been solitary wolves who were not well adjusted to wolf society, but fit
in beautifully in a solitary fashion, providing TLC to human
households, without taking them over. So: wolves negotiate, dogs manipulate.
It interests me - I've got friends with big dogs, and small children,
and I can't help but think: "Open the mouth on that dog, look at its
teeth, and tell me that apparatus is intended to be nice to your baby". I
see these folks being besotted about their pets (hamburger cheese
flavour dog food) and can't help but think "The manipulation worked".
Yes, of course your dog loves you to bits when you come home - it's
spent the day locked in the back yard, which is full of its shit. It is
curious that both primary human pets are carnivore, or carnivore-derived.
Wanna dem days. First my workout buddy, having told me he has relatives
over so isn't going to the gym this morning, texts me to ask me where I
was... then discovers I texted him last night to ask him if he really
wasn't going, to which he replied yes, having misread my message. Then, a
webcam that does not have autofocus suddenly develops autofocus when it
is plugged into USB3, but not in USB2, this with the Yawcam application
I recently started testing. However, on USB3 it dies, apparently not
liking the power it is getting, so... I was going into town to go to the
gym in Ballard, but now I am stuck getting the cam sorted, I hate
technology not working. It is the one thing I've always had control
over. People, not so much *grin*..
I suppose I am technically housesitting, what with my landlord off to
the Pacific beyond, there is more work in the vegtable garden than I had
anticipated, not helped by the various plants, planted too close
together so it is hard to see what's where. And the little tree I
chopped turned out to be a lot bigger than I thought, much of it hanging
into the neighbour's yard, I'd never paid much attention. I have no
clue how I am going to get it all into the yard waste pickup, but
there you go, exercise is exercise. From the look of it, I am going to
have to make one trip to the recycling center, if I want the place to
look halfway tidy. What vegetables I did not donate to the local soup
kitchen, are in the newly reconditioned freezer, which is freezing like
the clappers..
Then the heat came back - unusually, in early September, temperatures in the nineties,
and the wildfires to the East and South are now so bad the sky looks
like there is cloud cover, and sun and moon are shades of orange. Add to
that the burning smell, today the air was so bad I had an immediate
allergy attack, after a bout of retching decided going back inside, some
cooking for the freezer, was the better pastime. Thank God I moved the heat pump
into the living space, as it has an air cleaner and allowed me to close
up the house airtight - much to my infinite surprise, by the way, I
have it running 24/7 in the belated summer heat, it consumes only some
215 kwh/month, which boils down to about $22, at our electricity rates.
I've been redoing the calc and re-checking my measuring equipment,
because that is much less than I expected. And what with it being a heat
pump, that should pretty much be the same summer and winter. That bodes
well for when I get an apartment, something I had been worrying about,
when I went apartment shopping here in Seattle, a few years ago, nobody
really had advice on what heating might cost, I haven't lived in an
apartment for so many years... besides, in NYC you didn't pay for heat,
and I can't for the life of me remember how much the A/C cost, in those
days, and the window units I used then really weren't half as efficient
as what is available today. So I am glad I got this thing last year,
replacing the cool-only LG A/C, and am now able to run a full one month
test without bothering the housemates.
Amazingly, the wildfires - 150 and more miles from here - are generating
ashes that make it all the way over here, the cars in the driveway are
covered in it. I needed to wash the SUV anyway, but now I really do,
those ashes are acidy and not good for the paint. This is amazing
- we had ashes from a local fire last year, but that was a mile away,
if that - much of these fires are across the mountains or in the next
State. I am wearing a mouth mask, for now, you learn to do that in Asia.
Back to the heat pumps - after some thinking, I went back online and found more of the reconditioned Edgestar
units I already have one of, and as they are "half off" right now
(these cost around $500 new), I splurged and ordered another, just to
make sure I don't have to worry about heating or cooling once I find an
apartment. Global warming has made it to the Pacific Northwest in that
you now actually need air conditioning in summer. I remember all too
well the poor folks from the projects who would fall asleep in the
subway in New York City, because they did not have A/C and their
apartments were too hot to sleep in... I was planning to re-apply for a
low income senior apartment with the City of Seattle soon anyway,
and when I went an looked at one, noticed there isn't central heating
in these buildings. Now that I know these heat pumps really have
excellent heating and cooling capabilities, and I've had a chance to
calculate consumption, might as well. I thought about it, and those
refurbished units come in waves - I remembered that the last time I
wanted one, I ended up with an LG air conditioner because no refurbished
heat pumps were available. And as I said, these Edgestar units have
excellent capacity, are very efficient, not too noisy, and I'll live
with the ugliness. For the past three weeks, one single unit has kept
much of the house (minus two rooms) cool, can't ask for more than that,
and I know from previous winter use its heat output is pretty good too.
No more radiators, space heaters, baseboard heaters, all of which eat
much more power than a heat pump does. Seriously, I am amazed, for the
past 20 days, the period of my test, the unit has used only 71¢ worth of
electricity per day. Hard to believe.
What else is there... I don't know that you need me to comment on the
hurricanes and wildfires and floods, it is tunring out to be quite a
summer. Especially the Dutch and British Caribbean were hard hit,
as I write this we're waiting for landfall in Florida, where my friends
did not evacuate, New Yorkers, what can I tell you. Having had one Cat 3
come over my house (and I am talking about the eye here) I would not
want to repeat that, but you can't make the horse drink, especially duff
as they have plenty of family on Long Island, they could have watched
the thing on TV, like sensible people. Owell.
September 16, 2017: Summer always ends..
Keywords: Edgestar, A/C, heat pump, late summer, Irma, global warming, Brexit, Caribbean, fixing things, Open Box, reconditioned
Ah, lucky me! The second heat pump arrived on Wednesday, and that means I get a few days of whole house testing
before the folks return. And as the days are still hot but the nights
are cooling, I can test both A/C and heat, I had not expected to be able
to do that, and that is part of the reason I bought the second unit
now, nothing like knowing exactly what to expect (and pay..). That, as
they say, is so brilliant. This presuming nothing is wrong with the
"new" unit, but the experience I have with reconditioned equipment is
that it has been re-tested and, where necessary, repaired, and that
usually means it is better than, or at least equivalent to, new. Other
than that, just finishing up clearing the yeard, one more trip to the
recycling center, and I still have to re-sight my nine millimeter, that
almost went by the wayside, even if I bought a special alignment tool
and special oil. Finished clearing up in the garage today, the
only "extraneous" chore left to do is wash-and-wax the SUV, one of the
summer chores, pressure washer and all that.
I suppose I can be pleased with myself, I've done pretty much all of the
chores I set myself to complete in the month that I had the house to
myself, it is nice to kind of "let fly" without getting in anybody's
way. Garage is all tidy, tools sorted, freezer shelf full of veg, the
heat pumps are both sitting in test, fully installed, and what repairs and cleaning were necessary have 90% been done, I'll get the rest before Monday.
Before I forget, the "scratch and dent" heat pump I just received is in
very good shape - no scratches, no dents, worked right out of the box,
couple mount screws for the window vent missing, but that is something
Home Depot can solve in a heartbeat. Really very pleased, and between
the price ($30 less than the last scratch-and-dent I bought, which did
have scratches), the speed of shipment (FedEx ground, just under a week,
no shipping charge) and the shape it is in I heartily recommend these
folks: openboxdirect.com.
Irma
Brexit
I've been planning to write a tome about how the British are deceiving
themselves into thinking - this in reference to Brexit - they have a
"special relationship" with the United States, when all that is, IMHO,
is an interest loosely based on a commonality of language. Watch the
local BBC news, and 30% of it is stuff about America, as if nothing
happens in Belgium, France, Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, all places
with a sizable population of Brits, and large British commercial
interests. America's interests don't lie in Britain, and the days
that the Marine Corps bought Harriers are long gone. Once their actors
and actresses get to Hollywood they soon become Americanized, and then
American. Yes, lots of British accents in business, commerce and the
sciences, but nothing that ends up being exported back to the British
Isles. I personally think the Brits should have become part of Europe,
but then when they decided not to take part in the Euro, that was
never an option. They're an island people, and thinking they can do
with the Americans what they couldn't with the next-door Europeans is
folly. No, the Ozzies and the Kiwis have their bread buttered in Asia
and China, not in Downing Street. Sending military and SAS wherever the US needs support makes the Brits astute whores,
this isn't about them "assisting" the common good. Americans don't do
common good, they make money. The British build huge aircraft carriers,
even if Brtain does not need defending in that way - they don't even
make fighter jets for those carriers any more. I personally, Anglophile
as I am, think they're deluded, and will pay a very high price for their
"independence". They want to control immigration? Nobody will want to,
or be able to, move there any more - problem solved, I suppose. No, this
isn't the tome, I owe you that, no time to write that much this week.
September 20, 2017: Yep, rain, and a bad back
Keywords: heat pump, global warming, back injury, efficiency, hot water, heating, energy waste
Ouch. Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch. At 5:15am, I hare off to Seatac
Airport, to collect my friends arriving back from Asia, and brake a
little too hard, and my GPS phone slides off the passenger seat into the
footwell. Not to be outdone, I reach over at the lights, and reach a
little more. Something gives in my back - did I mention I think I am
developing muscle all over due to the gym visits? - and I know it is going to hurt.
To make sure I maintain the macho man image, at the airport I load some
really big suitcases in the back, while a perfectly functional big ugly
American is standing right there, happy to do it. I even managed to get
back home in time to go to the gym, but by now am in so much pain that
is not going to happen. Owell, pills and some soothing emails from the
gym buddies, who think beer might be the solution.
90 degree days
Curiously, after drought and heatwave for the whole month my friends
have been in SE Asia, yesterday afternoon the temperature plunges and it
starts raining, so by morning the weather is all "customary" for the
Puget Sound, except it has been a long and hot and dry summer, the lawn is straw. Speaking to folks who've lived here all their lives, global warming
is very real, though I personally don't know that it is as man made as
they want you to believe. No doubt human endeavours don't help, but I am
not convinced there isn't a warming cycle underneath it. Additional to
that, if we continue buying more cars and calling 350 hp hybrids "eco
friendly" and live in suburbia in homes twice the size we need so we can
store Costco's cheap bulk merchandise for a year in unnecessary
freezers we buy from Costco as well, I don't know there is going to be
any kind of a solution. I won't soon forget everybody bought a Prius
because they could then drive the HOV alone, back in Virginia and D.C.,
to the point their sensible cars caused traffic jams that had not been
there before. Regardless, then, of what causes global warming, humans
aren't going to stop that from happening. You can't drive an electric
car until the "Empty" light comes on, find an e-station and fill it up.
Getting serious about this stuff would be outlawing drive-throughs,
reducing engine capacities, moving bulk road freight to the
rails, stopping endless lines of passenger vans outside shopping malls
in Asia and Africa from idling to keep the A/C running - the picture to
the left shows you the endless line of vans sitting outside just one
mall in Pattaya, idling every day, all day and evening - and stopping
airconditioning outside seating areas in SE Asia. I could keep this list
going for another five screens, the thing is, we're only paying lip
service at conferences we unnecessarily fly to, even if they are halfway
around the globe. Not going to happen.
My recent testing of the Edgestar heat pumps (below) has led me to
wonder why we aren't adopting more of these electricity powered energy efficient technologies.
I "discovered" induction cookers in China, only to realize they were
available in the United States - not as $5,000 cookers, but as simple,
cheap, efficient countertop units you can save rivers of money with, by
comparison with electric rings and gas cookers. Same with hot water
heaters and gas central heating - the heat pump based water heater I
bought for my house in Virginia used 70% less energy (for real -
comparison tested by yours truly, tradeoff is a much longer recovery
time) than a "conventional" electric hot water tank. The picture to the
right shows it being installed, back in 2010, by my builder Dan. Ask
yourself why, when you can use a storage heater that consumes 600
watts at regular 117VAC household current, you'd install one that
consumes 4,500 watts at 230VAC? And then when I look at the Edgestar
14,000 BTU heat pumps I have just been testing, total energy consumption
just under $20 - hold on to your hat - for an entire month with 80s and
90s, this with low humidity.
I am probably boring the pants off you with my heat pumps, but I am
double checking my meter readings and calculations, as running an A/C
unit for a whole month for $20 is a bit staggering - yes, the house is
small, it wasn't a heat wave, but comparing it to past units isn't even
close. Total energy (that is, electricity) usage for the month was low -
to my standards - too, if my calc is right, $73, inclusive of the
aforementioned $20. To me, this just means I can, now that my credit
rating is restored, afford to live in an apartment again, heat it
(necessary) and cool it in summer, something that wasn't even really on
my radar. Teehee! Something we're not doing enough of is understanding
what technologies we have that are tried and tested and durable - like
heat pumps. Modern A/C compressors have been around since 1902, so
represent a truly mature technology, evidenced today by the availability
of quite small efficient room air conditioning units. IOW, while the
heat exchange technology in gas appliances has advanced to the point
that they can be made 98% efficient, they are still based on a gas flame
with a temperature of 2,770 °C, fed by a very explosive, poisonous
and combustible vapour that has no other purpose or capability than to
burn. I have a hard time understanding the logic - here in the Puget
Sound, I am told by a civil servant, we have enough hydro-capacity to be
self-sufficient in energy generation, yet here we mostly heat using
natural gas, which is imported from Canada and Mid-Western States. Say
what? I'll come back, in a future blog entry, on how we might get
"folks" to adopt more frugal ways, things that today, through regulation
and lawmaking, simply does not work - even in Europe they don't
understand that extra money for the summer vacation in Thailand and
state-sponsored in-vitro fertilization because having babies is so
necessary will prevent eco from ever really happening.
Sunday September 24, 2017: Too much of a good thing
Keywords: back injury, Facebook, online drivel, gym, chores, maintenance, Seattle Housing
The
issue before was that I could not make up my mind whether to "stay", or
move elsewhere, but considering I have my infrastructure here, doctors,
and know the place a bit, moving to a Seattle Housing apartment is
going to be easier and cheaper than finding somewhere down South, and
establishing residency there. I see older folk here in the suburbs
running themselves ragged just trying to stay connected, while their
kids are moving away, neighbours go into care homes, and have other
things to do, friends pass away, and a vacuum is slowly creating itself
around them. Living somewhere I can make full use of public transport
and renewing infrastructure is perhaps a smart thing, at this stage of
my life. Change is good.
Arthritis
Faceruble
Something we will likely never figure out is what the Russians hoped to
gain from meddling in the U.S. election, and if they indeed did, which
Russians did it. The latest I heard was that they spent "tens of
thousands of dollars" on Facebook ads - that's peanuts. That does not
buy enough ad space to materially alter an election that size. Apart
from that, with the importance American politics, and the American
president, have in the world at large, you have to ask yourself why that
cannot be allowed, I can't see a real reason why Russian politicos
should sit back and wait for the hatchet to fall.
The real problem is that places like Facebook
have such far reaching influence that folks will try to use it as a
manipulative tool - that's the rage, sit behind your laptop and make
people do what you want them tto do, from taking their clothes off to
giving money to people pretending to be other people. Think back what
happens when you log in - Facebook will determine what you get to see,
what has high priority - not you. I normally want to see the latest
postings, but Facbook won't let me set that - I get "most important"
postings, which is weird, because Facebook does not know what I find
most important. I've never told it what my priorities are, and it has no
way to establish what is important to me as it has no information about
my life and functioning outside of Facebook. Without the ability to see
me and interact with me when I am online, Facebook's algorithms cannot
possibly even make an educated guess. I can tell, if only because I have
had to unfollow quite a few people who post the most boring drivel, in
large volumes, for the most part reposts of things other people have
posted, and those endless proverbs from the Buddha, the Dalai Llama or
Cree Indians, which aren't their proverbs at all, just people sitting at
their tablet dreaming stuff up. It is tremendous to realize there are
people posting on Facebook whose entire lives are taken up by their
kids, cats, dogs, or long distance running, and then posting about it.
Nothing else, especially not questions about things they don't
understand, one dog is under a year old, already five times the size of
my friend's youngest child, and she does not have a clue this is a risk,
on many levels. I recall a girlfriend whose new dog was jealous of me
in her bed, and upset she couldn't sleep in that bed any more, so tried
to break the bedroom door down every nighto, problems you can avoid by
not having a dog. No, they do not have brains or intelligence, if they
did they would have developed the ability to speak and handle a can
opener.
Sorry, I digress. People have, between their smartphone and Facebook,
now the endless ability to post completely meaningful boring stuff
without asking anyone if it interests them. IOW, Facebook gives you
unbridled selfishness-without-repercussion. The point I am making is
this: Facebook manipulates your world view by deliberately presenting
you with a sequence and subjects of information, based on assumptions
from programmers who lack most information about the users they are
analyzing. If you don't know why somebody clicks "like", you can't
assume it is because they "like" something. We've gotten so absorbed by
"big data" that we have accepted the Facebook tenet that if certain
information is not available, it can be substituted by other
information. The problem, mostly, is that advertisers accept this is
proven, although they could see in their advertising results, on a dialy
basis, that it is not. They just find it easier to believe Facebook
than to analyze their own information, or (God forbid) require Facebook
to prove its claims.
Wednesday October 4, 2017: NFL? A Closed Club
Keywords: back injury, NFL, Seattle Housing, Car2Go,
Daimler, credit, First Amendment, public space, painkillers, diclofenac
sodium, website update, weather tile
Ouch
In the meantime, I've revamped the header of my website a little bit,
part of the problem being that I got errors from the Wunderground
weather tile. Eventually found another weather tile, which is working
fine, so far, and I compacted the header as much as I could so folks
with small screens can see the postings when they open the page, and
there isn't any weird script interfering with display capabilities. I
periodically archive older entries, so my "main page" does not get too
large, just keeping things tidy, I am always cognizant there are folks
on slow networks with low resolution "handphones".
Housing
As I mentioned, I am about to contact Seattle Housing
again, and see if I can put myself back on their apartment waitlist. It
occurred to me I really hadn't budgeted the move, beyond coming to the
conclusion I couldn't afford it, a couple of years ago. So I finally sat
down, took apart my outgoings and did a shopping list of must-haves,
considering I sold or left my furniture and most of my household goods
in Virginia when I gave the house back to the bank. I do have pots and
pans and linen and (now) two portable heat pumps, and, for some reason,
two hot water heaters, but I do need beds and tables and chairs, and
"stuff". So I made a list on Amazon, basically to see what things cost,
and what I can afford, nice little spreadsheets, offset against my
savings. Not quite sure why I did not do this before - I guess I did not
have enough savings, and no credit rating, but now I am in a better
place, and it isn't as much of a depressing "no can do" exercise. Phew.
Took a while. Especially the credit rating is a major big thing, as
agencies check that, as I found out last time. Not only that, I didn't
get the new account until fairly recently, that made my credit rating
take an automatic nosedive, and it then takes months to massage it back
up. Massively stupid, but it means the one thing you don't want to -
can't - do is get a rental check just after a new credit account and a
change in vehicle insurance policy. So, say six months. That's fine, I
just need to talk to the housing people and do my homework. Howzat...
The only thing that pains me is that I had hoped to be able to get a
loft bed - the real McCoy, California King, found an outfit that makes
them to order, collegebedlofts.com, but at well over $1,000 it is
outside of the budget. Not a bad price, for a fully constructed wooden
bed, that is not a small size. Add a mattress, stuff...
Actually, once I redid my budget spreadsheet in gory detail, I found I
am actually a bit short of cash, mostly caused by my high medical
outgoings. I pay a fair amount in health insurance fees, which actually
went up $50 a month this year, but then the copays are significant,
too. So after I find an apartment and move - thankfully enuough savings
to make that happen - I am going to have to reduce my outgoings. It
occurred to me that I don't necessarily need a car once I live in the
city, and I am now looking at using CAR2GO in the future, since that
seems abundantly available in Seattle. Not only that, there isn't a
subscription fee or membership fee, so you can truly be in charge of
your outgoings. Zipcar charges a membership fee, Daimler owned Car2Go
does not, making it ideal, if nothing else, to test the service before
moving. Sign up, give 'em a credit card number, and apparently downtown
parking is included in the rental charges, that alone could pay for
itself. Next time I go downtown, I'll check the service - find out where
the Car2Go cars are when I go look at apartment buildings, and perhaps
check a car out and drive it somewhere.
Monday October 9, 2017: The marketing is mostly fake
Keywords: Seattle Housing, Car2Go, Daimler, Mid-Autumn
Festival, Peking Duck, Tesla, EV, combustion engine, diesel, Blackberry,
Windows Phone
It is the Mid-Autumn Festival, and my Chinese neighbours drop a boat load of Peking Duck on us. Deelish. Gotta get something to reciprocate.
Increasingly, this electric car story is pie-in-the-sky. Yes, there's
Tesla, which isn't an affordable vehicle, but anything else simply does
not have the range nor the charging capability to compete with a conventional vehicle.
Tesla has proprietary chargers that simply aren't available at every
gas station, so its vehicles are rich man's toys, and when you see Musk
is building an enormous battery in Australia as a sort of megalomaniac
challenge, a battery to power an entire State for which no backup
manufacturing nor backup generation plant exists or is planned, you can
use that as proof that Musk is in it for Musk, not for you. He has not shipped a battery assembly to Puerto Rico, he has offered to help by talking to the Governor. On
9/11, manufacturers of telecommunications equipment called me and said
they would immediately redirect tens of millions of dollars' worth of
equipment ready for other customers, it was sitting on the dock, "tell
us where you want it, we'll sort the money out later". This to replace
the switch equipment destroyed at the WTC, and at the central office
next door, which the FDNY had no choice but use as an oversize fire
hydrant, flooding it in the process. The tractor-trailers began arriving
at my facilities in Manhattan and Arlington, VA, three days later.
Apart from anything else, Tesla's Autopilot is capable of killing his
customers, and I need to repeat that again and again - in my corner of
technology, job one is to guarantee service is safe, and 24/7, once you
have that technology under control, you can build on it. Musk
does the reverse, and I can tell you right now he is doing the same
thing with his spacecraft, he is in it for fame and fortune, has
something to prove. I've worked with many of those on Wall Street, they
always self destruct, and make victims along the way.
Cars are not electric
I have to ask if we're working on the right technology for replacing the
combustion engine. It is clear the hybrid works, but uses gas or diesel
fuel, hydrogen is "clean" but somehow hasn't made it into popularity,
and there is nothing else out there. Apart from anything else, for as
long as more car manufacturers than necessary are competing and building
incompatible technologies, we'll never achieve the economy of scale to
truly control pollution. We know now that the manufacturers of Diesel
engines fudged the numbers, and built fakery software into their motors,
and we can therefore assume that all combustion engines have similar
software, and all combustion engines pollute. For as long as they
compete, they're going to build cars that have oompf, and it is the
oompf that breaks the rules. If the oompf were disabled, there would be
far less pollution, but there isn't a legislature that will require full
control of the software - that would be the only way.
Go, Car, Go
Speaking of which, I got in the car, this morning, to go take a look at
the Seattle Housing Authority rental apartments - partly to see how
quick and convenient the Car2Go
vehicles were. I was surprized - even all the way South, in what I can
only describe as a blue collar neighbourhood, without shops, with the
exception of one massive Safeway across the street, there were plenty of
Car2Go vehicles around - two within 0.2 miles from the building, two
more 0.6 miles away. That's a few minute's walk! Now, once I look at the
other SHA buildings, I'll need to rent a Car2Go through the app, and
run around in it for a bit (if I am going to rent an apartment I need
one in one of the Car2Go areas, and the only way to really figure that
is go there and see what's where, and how close). Kind of the only way
to test. The concept of insurance, parking, gas, everything in a
per-minute price is amazing, especially where Zipcar wants a
subscription. I suppose this is what happens when you bury yourself in
countryside and suburbia for too long, you keep au fait with what goes
on in the cityscape through the internet, not in real life. Well, that
is something I can change.
Not only that, as I do my research I discover Car2Go has made sure its smartphone app runs on older platforms
- Windows Phone and Blackberry, in my case - as well. I don't like
having applications on my Blackberry, as they all "reserve the right" to
mine your address book, and I don't want that. So I have a couple of
different handsets I use for particular applications, that do not have
my address book or sensitive data. And, unlike many other apps, with
Car2Go, that works. That's cool - it is so simple: the more people you
can serve, the more money you make, and if you insist the customer has
the latest version of Android, that simply means you collect personal
data from the handset you don't really need to serve the customer. It is
that simple. Years ago, I had a conversation with a programmer in my
department that made him take a walk, when I explained the advanced page
generation language he was using wasn't compatible with the old
browsers the Federal Morons were using, and the Federal Morons was what
paid the bills and gave the permits. It was that simple.
Sunday October 15, 2017: The City is growing on me
Keywords: Seattle Housing, Car2Go, Blackberry, Fitness19, elder housing, suburbia, smartphone, AI, data mining
After a few days of looking at apartment buildings, and checking their
locations for Car2Go vehicles and other amenities, I found some "good
spots". Today, in Ballard, I parked, got out, pulled up the Car2Go app,
and found two available luxury Mercedeses
within a four minute walk of where I was. While I went to look at the
high street, shops and the like, I passed a couple of parking cops, and
asked them what they thought, and got a swift answer that you can drop
the Car2Go vehicles almost anywhere, even (free of charge) in city paid
street parking, and they said they encountered Car2Go vehicles in the
main drag in Ballard all the time, day and night. Indeed, the two I
mentioned earlier were in a residential neighbourhood, clearly
left there by folks who'd driven one home. If later, you can find
another down the block when you want to go shopping, this works, they've
put enough cars into Seattle, and folks are using them, so they "pop
up". I am going to just test drive one in a few days, but this truly
looks like there isn't a need to own a car, living in Seattle. As I
said, I did the math, and this is clearly cheaper than owning a car,
especially since big box stores like Home Depot have cheap rental trucks
if you buy something there you need to get home. Besides, there is
almost nothing you can't order online, and have delivered. So keep
reading, I'll keep you posted on my testing.
At the same time I noticed a gym,
literally around the corner, that had a "Silver Sneakers" sticker on
the door. I walked in to inquire, state of the art, nice folks, yes,
they did accept Silver Sneakers memberships ("free" for me as part of my
health plan), and even though I have no idea whether or not SHA
will offer me an apartment there, "Lisa" signed me up on the spot.
Across the street a big, but overpriced, QFC, but that's better than the
nondescript "markets" in other places. Of the locations I have seen,
this is probably the best, owell, better not get my hopes up... So I am
done looking, all I have to do is fill out the application, send it in -
actually, I could hand deliver it and then go test one of those cars.
Ha.
One
thing I recall, with this housing kerfuffel, is that I see a lot of
older folk living in the suburbs, in houses they have owned a long time,
even though their kids have moved away, some friends have
passed, others have moved, and they couldn't go places without a car -
no Macy's or Sears in walking distance - a 7-11 if you're lucky. Years
ago I decided that once I got older, I should move to a town or city
with municipal elder care, rather than live in the country. Neighbours
in Virginia, now elderly, bought into a "retirement development"
marketed through their church, and ended up in a compound that isn't
near anywhere, where the owners didn't build half the facilities they
had promised, and even if they wanted to walk to the supermarket they'd
have to do so down a double carriageway (they actually were not allowed
to sign their contract unless they could show they had put their current
house on the market). A neighbour here this afternoon stopped and when I
mentioned Car2Go, said "makes you wonder why we own cars". Well, D.,
you own a car because there isn't any Car2Go in suburbia, that's for the
cityscape. So this is all beginning to grow on me.
Smartphone-in-hand is beginning to grow on me as well, I must say. I've
been on the "cellphone bandwagon" longer than most - I had a Radio Shack
(Nokia) handheld TAC phone as far back as 1989, still get comments from
former colleagues who saw me with a contraption (this in Manhattan!)
they didn't even know existed. One thing that truly bothers me is that
most apps require you to allow them to copy and use your entire
smartphone configuration, and your address book, including email
addresses and everything. I can't help being security conscious, but I
have two extra lines just to make sure that does not happen. Only my
primary handset has my address book, while the apps I use (and some I am
actually need) are on the handsets that don't have the address book.
Similarly, each ancillary handset is married to a different email
address I hardly use, so there is no way for apps to get at my address
book indirectly, through Google or Yahoo or Hotmail - they do. Yes, one
line with a fancy iPhone is what the carriers and handset manufacturers
want you to do, but iif you do your sums you can get three cheap
handsets with different capabilities for just about the same price, and a
three line family plan with internet and tethering is only marginally
more expensive than a single line. Is it important to go to these
lengths? Let me put it to you this way: many cybercriminals now run
corporations, which allows them to sign up to "big data" offerings from
Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo, none of whom routinely
investigate new clients. They are "reactive", they don't look at
commercial customers until something goes wrong. You've seen how both
Facebook and Google sold advertising space to criminal Russian
enterprises around the U.S. election, and the reason this was possible
is simply that commercial IT corporations spend little or no money on
social data security. They protect themselves from getting hacked, but -
and I repeat this - you can tell none of these corporation have
functioning Artificial Intelligence, because if they did the AI would
have easily made the connections between the new commercial customers
and cyber criminals. The work is done by hackers, and those are the same
who hack your accounts and break into Equifax. AI is used exclusively
to try and predict your future behaviour, this to enhance revenues, and
they have the commercial world bamboozled to the point most major
corporations believe the nonsense Facebook and Google and Microsoft tell
them, even though none of these IT empires can prove their AI can
successfully predict what you will be having for dinner on Wednesday,
even if they have your shopping list.
At any rate, this is kind of exciting - when in aeons past you needed to
check whether you had cellular service where you were thinking of
moving, now you need to figure out if you have on-street rental vehicles,
if there are enough of them, if they are close enough, and add that to
the gym and the supermarket and internet and 4GLTE cellular service,
where possible combined with streaming video. And guess what - the
advanced infrastructure here in Seattle is caused by it being one of the
world's technology centers, with Amazon, Microsoft and T-Mobile all
headquartered here.
Sunday October 22, 2017: Tidying up
Keywords: Craftsman, Sears, electric mower, wolf, dog, canine, Toshiba, surveillance camera, Yawcam, Voltaren, NSAIDs, Aspirin
Home Surveillance Setup
Wow! This piece of freeware is completely amazing! It streams too,
again, simple setup. I need to look a little closer at its security
issues, but I see no shims being loaded, no spurious drives, simple
piece of Java runtime that does it all. I'll need to test its functions,
interval timer, what have you, but it looks like it runs perfectly
acceptably even on this anemic laptop. All I will want it for is to sit
in the corner and provide surveillance footage 24/7, it has
motion detection, and that means pics off offsite, so it does not matter
if a burglar takes the "server", pics are on my webserver, where they
can't get at them. Very nice - and very cheap, between the Toshiba
($195) with a $28 memory chip I already had, and a Windows 10 Pro
upgrade that I think came with one of the HP Elitebooks, where I didn't
use it. Because it was an aftermarket upgrade, it wasn't "locked" to a
CPU, lucky me. Truly, brilliant. I think I'll buy an external fan for it
- it doesn't have a built in fan, doesn't need that, but running 24/7
as a video server probably needs whatever help it can get.
Cool. The rechargeable mower
(see August 13, below) I reconditioned over the summer sold! There was
no interest before, I lowered the price last week by $15, and somebody
emailed me, dropped by, took off with it. Not a massive profit, besides,
that goes to neighbour D., whose property it was, and the four new 12VC
lead acid batteries cost me $66, but I am just pleased I managed to
restore the thing to perfect working order, the buyer seemed well
pleased, and I have my outlay back. Excellent mower, by the way, but I
think Sears made a sizable mistake putting something on the market
powered by lead-acid batteries. Those you can't run all the way down
(they die) and they don't like being frozen, and those are conditions
that are sort of endemic in winter in a garden shed. Good piece of
technology - I added a cheat sheet with pointers for battery
maintenance, just to emphasize to the buyer that if he does not do
maintenance it'll stop working.
Painkiller choice is complicated
If you know what is good for you you will not take "pain killers",
NSAIDs, a.k.a. non-steroidal anti-inflammatories. The over-the-counter
kind. The name itself makes no sense - they're not pain killers.
Hydrocodone and Oxycodone, the well known opioids, are pain killers,
ant-inflammatories may combat pain that is caused by inflammation
but that is as far as that goes. I've been thinking about this,
researching, for some time, especially since these things change all the
time. I've been on Voltaren for many years, but recently, that has
become less popular and considered "more risky", but I wonder, is that
because it is being prescribed, now, for non-arthritis "pains"? when I
began taking it, that was its sole use. And I have been on naprosyn, now
on the supermarket sheles as well, that too used to be an
arthritis-specific prescription medication. Of course, arthritis does
cause inflammation, and that causes pain. So recently, when I ran out of
Voltaren, while waiting for my refill to arrive, I decided to try Aspirin
for a bit. After all, for years I took those little 81mg "heart health"
Aspirins, on doctor's orders (I quit them a year or so ago, when it
became science that these pills were for folks in danger of heart
attacks or recurrent heart attacks, both not me), so if I needed a
"painkiller" - doctor approved - why not try a larger dose of Aspirin?
Make sense?
I have to emphasize, though, I take NSAIDs because I have to, not to
combat aches and pains and work out harder. Important distinction: my
immune condition causes inflammations which can lead to permanent
damage to joints and cartilage. NSAIDs are increasingly found to have
nasty side effects, and if you consider I am taking this s**t for 44
years, I am kind of amazed I haven't sustained more damage. But as I
said, a choice I don't have, I either manage and balance my intake or it
is wheelchair. Way back when, the choice was stark already - wheelchair
(which is how I began this trip, after a car accident) or
functionality, with the risk of early death. I suppose I've managed well
- and been lucky.
Monday October 30, 2017: Spreading Wings
Keywords: Toshiba, surveillance camera, webcam, ITV, USB,
Chrome, HTML5, Car2Go, Mercedes, Ballard, AlphaGo, AI, artificial
intelligence, Tesla
Then, suddenly none of my browsers (regardless of which flavour of
Windows) will render ITV programming any more, live broadcast, yes, but
none of the playback streaming. So despite my convictions, I've
had to install Google Chrome, which, apart from a bunch of Apple
browsers, will handle the streams, or so the interweb tells me. Probably
something to do with HTML5, and fraud control, from what I can Google
the encryption is on the heavy side. Chrome is a native HTML5 browser,
where others just have code worked in, and none of it seems to work -
when the server sees Flash, it starts that up, then crashes. Pity. Spent
half an hour finding and removing the autostarts Google put in the
operating system, the amount of data collection is slowly ludicrous, and
because Google wants you to not remove them, they insert multiple
starts in different places. The "autoruns" tool Microsoft
makes available is brilliant for this - but be careful using it, one
typing error or accidental click can brick your PC. I did that recently,
then had to recover the operating system using a Repair DVD, so I was
able to restore a backup - I make those on a daily basis, a good idea if
you like to make operating system changes.
Eventually, of course, I didn't manage to get out there to test Car2Go
until the weekend, and unlike most of the week, it rained cats and dogs.
I did drive downtown and got a feel for where things are on
Saturdays, just couldn't pluck up the courage to walk ten minutes in the
driving rain, didn't make much sense, because I could have dropped the
car right back next dooor to where I was parked. I did discover the
Polyclinic staff parking is only a staff parking on weekdays, so that's
somewhere to park for free at weekends - Seattle now wants meter parking
seven days a week, bless their greedy hearts. I think I can bend the
rules a bit - as a Polyclinic patient, I should be OK parking there,
right? So I guess (more below) I'll go and do my Car2Go test next
weekend, and go to the Ballard gym, the sun is back, and supposedly will
stick around for the next few days.
So yes, I did, Ballard gym, but then I couldn't find the Car2Go car my
app insisted was there. So I decided to head back to the Northgate Mall,
where I had noticed there were a few cars - same thing. Turns out
people park these things where they shouldn't - like a Seattle Public
Library lot adjacent to the mall - and these smaller Mercedeses don't
look like Mercedeses, and they're not all white. Call me stupid. But
this is a good learning curve, I am running around doing things that
don't feel comfortable - new, different, yadayada, but this is a good
way to combat the insecurity. Know what I mean? I did speak to the help
line at Car2Go, and they confirmed cars are left where they shouldn't
be, like that library lot, and I had a hard time, GPS and all, locating
that particular vehicle, partly because I hadn't expected one to be in
that lot. I have to say doing this research is quite useful - when are
cars available where, what is the actual distance (the app is a bit
pessimistic and thinks a car is 12 minutes' walk away when it is maybe 4
or 5), especially if you're planning on taking a Car2Go to go to the
mall, say, and then drop it and want to find another a couple of hours
later. One of the important aspects, to me, is if that's an achievable
scenario, and I am trying to figure out where that "works best", so to
speak.
Well, that's cool - my retiree health insurance package (Medicare
with an employer add-on) has reduced its monthly bill for next year -
this after it went up some $50 per month for the current year. I had not
expected that, worried about it going up again. It is, in fact, even
below the 2016 contribution. Gosh. From 2016 to 2017 the premium went up
18%, but now it will be lowered by about 20%. There is no telling how
these contributions are calculated, but especially with my attempt to
get a Seattle Housing apartment, this is very welcome news. Between the
lower contribution and my plan to let go of the SUV in favour of Car2Go,
I am looking at a break-even. That would be magical!
Intelligence can't be Artificial
Thing is, that failsafe - which I and my colleagues built into our
automation software from Day One - needs to be at the core of any
software. It comes first. Anything you build after that, if it cannot
complete, must end up in the failsafe. Yes, I know, you can't put a car
on the road and have it suddenly stop. That is not my problem. Very
sorry, but it has to. If it does not stop you will not know
there's been a catastrophic failure. When software fails there is no
grey area. If you had intelligence in this thing that accident, that death, would not have happened.
Finally, a wayward Uzbek decides to carry out a truck attack in the
United States. Not as spectacular as others, overseas, but still pretty
devastating. Kudos to NYPD, which I think has had special training so
they could ignore the ruse of deadly force assailants use - fake bomb
vests, fake guns - and take the assailant down without killing him. No suicide by cop,
we're getting better. But it is getting to the point that I think this
is a good time to get a carry permit, something I really never seriously
considered before. While Virginia and Washington State, where I live
now, are both open carry states, it is nice to have the capability to
carry a loaded firearm - it is especially handy since you can't really
"open carry" in a vehicle, and while you can have a loaded firearm in
the car in Virginia, provided it is in plain sight, here in Washington
State that is not as common. A carry permit takes that concern away.
I'll likely never run into a terrorist carrying out an attack, but then
again, cops aren't as thick on the ground everywhere, as they are in
NYC. Again, kudos to NYPD, taking this one alive. And then this
gentleman in Texas springs a leak. It is hard to keep up with this
stuff.
Not my week for tech. This morning I can't get my heart rate
monitor to talk to my phone, thinking maybe the HRM battery is dead, but
once I reboot it all works again. And last night my main (Bluetooth)
keyboard hangs up, and never comes back to where I can re-add it to my
system. My spare keyboard keeps hanging up too, some kind of timeout I
can't seem to change, hastily ordered a new Bluetooth keyboard -
they are great but do not last. I use an external keyboard so I don't
wear out the primary in the laptop, the keyboard, after the hard disk,
the part that gets the most wear in a computer. In the interim (read on)
I am swapping disks out in the various systems, having bought one
additional 2TB drive, which will replace one that's been running 24/7s
since June of last year - not that anything is wrong with it, but
relegating it to backup is something I do routinely, these drives are
happier when they get to take breaks, and it is nice to have drives that
can be put back into permanent service when necessary.
If you're hoping to get the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update
downloaded and auto-installed to your PC or laptop, you're out of luck.
The update - on at least two of my PCs and on those of a lot of folks
posting on Microsoft's support system - when run through the Update
section of the Settings menu, does not complete. It "starts install",
then "downloads", then "installs" - and then starts all over again,
without any warning, errors, or anything else. What it does do is
prevent any other updates or driver installs from happening. I
eventually, after diligent searching, found a post from a person who had
downloaded the ISO disk image, burned that to DVD, and installed it
successfully. That is what I am doing now, after losing a day-and-a-half
to install attempts. This is asinine. Most Windows users do not know
how to burn an install DVD, many Windows users don't even have the
software to do that, since Microsoft kindly no longer includes CD and
DVD tools in its operating system (if yours has it that is because the hardware
manufacturer included it), so they will not get updated until Microsoft
fixes this. As it is, the download and install takes some five hours,
so don't plan this in between shopping trips, not gonna work. What is
the problem? Microsoft no longer tests its consumer processes before
releasing them. What we ought to do is bill them for the time it takes
to fix their errors. If 100,000 users did that they might get the
message, especially since this would hold up in court... As I write
this, I am doing an online update using the Download Tool, as the DVD
that worked on one of my HP laptops won't work on the Toshiba. I noticed
on the HP that Microsoft copied my email information to its mail
application, even though it never asked, and I did not authorize that.
The email information is there because if you do not use a Microsoft
mail address for a login, Microsoft will not let you move the install to
another computer, for instance if you replace the one you're using. It
is pretty obnoxious that Microsoft takes your personal information and
moves it to somewhere so they can put it in another database, and
activate email pushing whether or not you want it on that machine.
Microsoft, in its installs, now no longer asks for any kind of
permission, and routinely locks up your PC for hours when all you wanted
to do was turn it off or reboot.
I can't say the politics have my interest much - I suppose they
never really did, even when I was living in the Washington (D.C.) area.
My job prevented me from commenting much, of course, you can't very well
slag off your major clients, like Rudy Giuliani and George W. Bush,
while taking their money. That's a choice, and OTOH you have to think
about the number of people in your organization dependent on those
clients. It is easy to criticize, but look at the Harvey Weinstein saga,
and ask yourself why there are so many folk who didn't not file
complaints and went after the perpetrators - the Strauss-Kahn case comes
to mind, even though the complainant eventually lost all credibility,
she still walked away with a million dollars net, and Strauss-Kahn's
high flying career was largely ruined. So yes, I don't think much of
Trump, but he got where he got, and those accused, like Kevin Spacey,
still all walk away with a bit of money in the bank...
In the meantime, replaced the malfunctioning webcam with an IP cam
from Faleemi, Amazon got that to me in double time, without shipping
charges. Quite a sophisticated device for its $40. The only problem is
that you can only set it up (that is, connect it to your WiFi router and
give it an address on your network) using an Android or IOS application
on a smartphone, you can't activate it from your network or a laptop.
That means that anything you tell the app, as well as your cellphone
data, network information and address book, is sucked up by Faleemi.
This is not good. I got around it by deleting the app and its
permissions from my Galaxy after (successfully) setting it up, then
changing its setup, address, network parameters and everything else from
a browser window (which it lets you do, thankfully). It is hardly
surprising there are so many hacks out there, every IOT device
you buy broadcasts its presence to its makers and the world the minute
you turn it on, this even had DDNS preset to its manufacturers cloud -
much like the network drives I bought, this device lets you stream your
stuff to their cloud, where you can then access it after you
create an ID on their system, but like most everybody else, once your
data is on their cloud they reserve the right to do just about anything
with it, pretty much like Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo do. I
read the stories in the press, but the average consumer doesn't seem to
worry about it, and certainly lacks the wherewithall to do anything
about it.
I am increasingly seeing manufacturers making sophisticated equipment
available at rock bottom prices, accompanied by software that is
invasive to the equipment it is installed on. I had that last year with
the HP Deskjet 3633, whose installer I had to disrupt to get it
to let me install the drivers without the mandatory registration and
data collecting management software, Faleemi does the same thing on your
smartphone, and now the new owners of Quicken require not only
registration, but their new version has a subscription basis - you no
longer own the software, and the basic versions are crippled.
I mentioned earlier (around mid-September, below) that I had finished
testing the "portable" Edgestar heat pumps - I put one in my office,
where it provides ancillary heat, the other one got tested, drained and
went into storage in a big box (I would not describe a 90 lb device as
portable) with all of its bells and whistles. I am still amazed at how
frugal with power these things are, glad I was able to snag two
reconditioned models, just about a "twofer". The Edgestar folks do a
really good job of reconditioning their equipment, I've over the years
had little trouble with "factory reconditioned" stuff in general.
Frustrating doctor visit, today - OK, a little blister on my skin wasn't
bad, so that was good, but then she tries to get me to schedule an
echocardiogram, and I find that is only 80% covered, and I can't recall
any other physician, in the past 300 years, ever wanting me to have one.
My heart and chest get plenty of diagnostic attention, anyway, for
various reasons, so I can't help thinking they're just trying to drum up
more trade for the Seattle Cancer Care outfit, which already is on my
wrong side as it seems to think it is OK to send large envelopes through
the mail that state clearly you're a cancer patient, as if it their job
to let your post person and housemates know that. The other day, they
reminded me to have my mammogram - when I pointed out to them I am not a
female person, I was told that I could just spread the word. Not. So if
I am having an ultrasound, it is not at SCCA.
How does the early November suddenly turn to winter? Snow, overnight temps down to 26,
not funny. Had to get the snowboots out, just for safety's sake,
hopefully this is just a fluke. Hadn't even topped up the antifreeze,
thankfully still had some glycol sitting around in the garage, I ought
to re-pressurize the cooling system, let's see if it slurps any more out
of the overflow first.
Thursday November 16, 2017: And then Micosoft rears its ugly code
Keywords: Windows 10, Fall Update, large hard disks, terabytes, backing up, system updates
I haven't for 30 seconds decided to do some software upgrades, and
connected to that move some of my daily activities to Windows 10, or my
main laptop springs a leak. Self inflicted, I tried to do a software
install that not only failed, but ripped my Windows Media Center, which
is what I use to watch and record TV, to shreds. I had moved my
financial software to Windows 10, for safety's sake, while I tried the
upgrade, so didn't lose data or access to it, but when I tried to
recover Windows 8.1 that would not work, and then I realized none of my
Windows Repair disks for that machine worked. One of them eventually
gave me an error message I could understand, something about the install
being on a BIOS disk, and my recovery was targeted to an EFI system,
and after I turned off EFI and rebooted, the recovery worked - took me
over half a day to figure this out. Then, I didn't have a really recent
backup in one place, so I had to use an older image backup, and data
from a file backup on a different disk to bring that up to date. It all
worked (actually not completely done yet) but it was a scare. I am going
to switch to Windows 10 now, you really can't keep using older
operating systems forever, and I noticed that my financial software now
has a big problem with older versions of Windows, guess that's what
happens when an established software publisher is taken over. Lost
weekend, but at least I am still in control, would hate to find my
computer skills are out of date, phew!
All of that gives me the chance to promote the laptop with the faster processor (2.9 GHz i7
rather than 2.6 Ghz i5) and fewer bells and whistles to desk duty, as
the other is better suited for travel and things, with its fingertip
recognition and webcam, and lack of USB 3.0 ports. I have a 2TB drive on
the way to free up the fast 1TB drive I am using for backup, and that
can then go in the desk unit. So there. In the process, I noticed my
primary drive load with all of my "live" archive files (those that do
not live in retired status on my 10TB of network storage) is just about a
terabyte in size, so I need to decide whether to pare down the
archives, or put the slower 2TB drives in the main desk unit. While 7200
rpm is clearly faster than 5400 rpm, a 2TB drive has twice the amount
of storage space a 1TB does, on the same platter surface, so seek time
would be lower, and I've had one of those fast HGST 1TB drives fail on
me already (replaced under warranty), so: decisions, decisions... OTOH,
when I semi-retire the slower Elitebook, that will still be running
Windows Media Center, and that would mean I can store my video files on
that unit. Let's see... wow, I have a whopping 876GB of recorded TV, so
that will only barely work on the 2TB drive with 1TB mostly occupied.
Rethink.
Yes, I was right. Moving my Robocopy file backup back to the "main
machine" I have just over a terabyte of space occupied, including the
OS. Well, that makes sense, that's why I switched from a 1TB to a 2TB
drive, back in June of 2016. I then moved some of the data I did not
want to carry from the laptop to another disk, and I guess I am now
"undoing" that, but moving only some data and selected applications to a
faster laptop. I am a firm believer in semi-retiring things before they
die, and "spreading the load" isn't a bad idea, the fan of the "slower"
Elitebook occasionally does go off like a 747 about to take off.
Entirely my own fault, must admit, the thing is loaded, normally runs
two or three apllications simultaneously, and drives two high resolution
displays, and some four or five communications ports. Owell. In the
meantime Microsoft has decided to startt pushing the Fall update,
without any kind of warning, and so every attempt at disk cloning and
install fails, because Microsoft makes changes to my drives in the
middle of backing up. Idiots.
Saturday November 18, 2017: It gets more complicated but not better
Keywords: Windows 10 Pro, Fall Creators Update, Toshiba, HP, United Healthcare, AARP, Mutual of Omaha, dementia, memory loss
No, those aren't life insurances they're hawking on TV, they're death
insurances. You can just talk to your family, put some money away in a
savings account every quarter, and still be able to touch that in case
of need, medical bills, what have you. Guess what, open a savings
account and you don't need to pass a medical, and your bank will make
the right arrangements so your heirs can access that account. And you
don't have to suffer the deductions Mutual of Omaha must withold
to pay for its expensive prime time TV advertising with the fake
grandmas. I know it is hard to save, I can't say I ever was able to -
until I lost my home and my savings in the stock market crash. At that
time, I cut up my credit cards (most of which were maxed out anyway) and
used my last cash, from selling my furnishings and second car, to move.
The bank helped by sending me a cheque when I signed my house back to
them in good shape. Then, I had my overseas benefits payments paid into a
separate bank account, and largely have not touched that, realizing I
needed some savings if I had no access to credit. That wasn't
restored until earlier this year, six years after I lost it, when I was
able to apply for a new credit card. So yes, even I can save, and at
this point I am not using my credit other than for shopping, so I have
both savings and emergency money now.
The AARP Medicare Plan? You pay AARP for a membership, AARP then does nothing for your health except bill United Healthcare,
which you then pay more to than you otherwise would, because they have
to pay AARP for using their "intellectual property" from which you, the
consumer, derive no benefit whatsoever.
Memory needs New Stuff
So I'll keep doing PC experiments, and learning new tricks
in Windows and mobile devices, simply because programming and
troubleshooting always brings new challenges, and make you rethink
things you thought you knew.
Sunday November 26, 2017: Data Collection or Sex, someone, somewhere, is abusing you
Keywords: Windows 10 Pro, Fall Creators Update, Microsoft, Weinstein, Strauss-Kahn, PC-AT, data collection, HP Elitebook
I am, at any rate, just waiting for the holidays to be done with,
finished the shopping, and largely done the other chores. I should
change the oil in the SUV, and mow if the sun comes out for a day, that
isn't necessarily likely, but the threatening winter has not
materialized, so.. Hopefully I will soon get an idea of where I am on
the apartment waiting list, I should call SHA next week, not having
heard anything. But other than that, I've done most of the chores, and
actually find that moving the laptop that doubles as a DVR out of
everyday use makes good sense. Both laptops actually are under much
less of a load like this, which is a good thing. I just need to finish
the backups, I've been having problems with port availability, and with 1
and 2 terabyte master disks, using fast ports is a necessity - for the
heck of it, I tried using a USB 2.0 port, but a backup then takes as
much as 24 hours, which isn't viable. The disk didn't like it either,
and ended up declaring "read only", which took some research to resolve
and re-initialize.
Don't ask for trouble, because you'll get it. In my case, deciding to
swap two laptops, putting a replacement 2 terabyte hard drive in one,
and updating the Windows 10 install with the "Fall Creators Update"
ended up causing three installs (one repeated), a full OS recovery
(still don't know what blew the partition) and at least four software
re-installs. It all worked, I did not lose data, and actually gained
some functionality in unexpected ways, but still, four days of work,
which is way over the top, considering these are supposed to be simple,
usable tools. Not.
One remaining niggly is that I can't get XnView, my favourite picture
tool, to read in some directories off a backup disk - massive
directories, but previously, this worked just fine. The only difference
is that I now use the Windows 10 Fall 2017 Creators Update, can't
imagine what else could cause this. Other than that, everything works -
the 2017 update to my financial software won't install under Windows
8.1, even though there was an earlier version there to update, but under
Windows 10 it does just fine. Asinine - the publisher was bought out, I
can only imagine the new guys don't much care about the existing users,
and older systems, and didn't hire some of the programming staff. Maybe
they're not good at statistices, or they bought a failing product that
needed "renewal" - rather than sell updates, they're changing the
licensing structure, too.
I did have to spend some significant time getting all of the ports in
the two Elitebooks to work - where I must admit to installing extra
ports - using the Expresscard slots, and an external hub - and using
large hard disks. This looks like a problem for the motherboards, which
run out of interrupts, on occasion. There are, indeed, lots of extra
devices in these systems, Bluetooth, several network interfaces,
fingertip scanner, even a smartcard interface. To give you an idea of
the idiosyncracy: with the Windows 10 machine all set up and running, if
I plug a webcam into one of the remaining USB ports, another port stops
functioning. Similarly, Bluetooth isn't functioning the way the Good
Lord intended it, all I can think is that, again, the good old PC-AT bus
underneath it all just runs out of interrupts. HP thoughtfully built
disk vibration monitoring into the Elitebooks - nice, but that too takes
an interrupt - under Windows 10 Creators update, their driver won't
even work. All in all, it took me a good day to get all of the ports to
work reliably in both systems, especially keeping the ATSC (TV) dongles
accessible was an issue.
All they updated was their data collection
Of course, I wasn't an avid Windows 10 user, my "main machine" ran 8.1.
But as I mention below, I decided to switch from the Elitebook 2560p
with Windows 8.1 to the 2570p, which has Windows 10, and so getting it
to "run right" is an imperative. This especially since Microsoft builds
all kinds of security into its internet connections and browsers, but
then disables many of those so it can push software onto your PC. This
is not a good thing - recently, Skype stopped functioning as it "could
not reach the internet" - well, said the Community Support person, "just
reset Internet Explorer to default". That, Microsoft, allows webservers
to put third party cookies on my PC, cookies that do not have to
identify themselves, cookies that could belong to hackers. Skype has,
without actually saying so, hugely increased it requirements for access
to your operating system. something similar to this happened a couple of
years ago. If you want to know why there is so much cybercrime,
ransomware, etc., this is you answer: Microsoft, Google, Facebook,
Yahoo, all deliberately disable much of your browser and internet
security so they can allow their advertisers to access your operating
system and they themselves can track your activities. Their revenues are
more important to them than your security, and that of your family and
your employer. Ransomware would not be possible if software makers did
not allow lots of security back doors open. LinkedIn I have all but
stopped using, as it requires third party cookies - not only that, the
moderated forums where you could discuss things with other professionals
are gone, all I see being posted are advertisements, surreptitious or
otherwise.
I need to call the Seattle Housing folks, and find out how my
application is doing. While it may take a year or more to find
somewhere, the last time I tried this (and did not proceed for my own
reasons) it only took six months, and this time, having learned my
lessons, I am more or less ready to move now, making sure I can't
be caught out for lack of planning and money. Especially having bought a
couple of heat pumps was a good move - and now it is clear why there
were a number of reconditioned ones available, the manufacturer has
stopped making them, and replaced them with an upgraded - and more
expensive - model, which has features and styling I really don't need,
especially considering they cost, for now, more than twice what I paid
for mine (which, admittedly, I bought as reconditioned items). Mine do
not auto-switch between heating and cooling - but that is a feature
you're not likely to use if you don't live in the desert, where it can
be 90 in the shade during the day, and drop below freezing at night. So
I'll live with that..
Finally figured out how to fix the timeouts in the Bluetooth
keyboards and touchpads.. It is really so simple: pair and connect the
Bluetooth device to your laptop, then shut down and turn it off, restart
the laptop but not the device, go into the Windows Device Manager, find
all drivers associated with both Bluetooth and the device (which means
making Device Manager show hidden devices, it is a menu option), and
look in each entry's settings to check if there is a Power Setting. That
power setting can have a check mark, indicating Windows can "turn off
the device to save power". Take away the check mark, click "OK", and you
can shut down again, turn on the Bluetooth device, start the laptop
back up, and you're done, no more timeout problems. I previously
sometimes had a blue screen and a crash, but as it turns out that's what
happens when you try and change the settings on a connected device.
Duh. Now it is perfect, no control failures at all. I just need to
charge the keyboard every day, because the new Bluetooth standard
actually sets the timeout on the devices themselves. I've had it run out
of juice once, already.
Great! Went for my cancer checkup on Friday, clean bill of health, but
by the next morning had a sore throat, which wouldn't go away, so now I
am on antibiotics and some other stuff, guess that's what happens when
you go to a hospital (or airport). Blah. OTOH, doctor gave me some
medication I had never heard of, to suppress the cough, so I should be
fine. Umm, well, fine with caveats. The antibiotic gives me the
shits, and then I ask and find out I can't take my biologic shots until a
couple of weeks after I finish the antibiotic. And I find the cough
suppressant doesn't, so I have to run out after gym to get some
decongestant. Could have done that yesterday. Hate being sick.
Something I keep noticing - as I get older, I get more impatient. That's
not good, and actually counter-productive. I'd also not expected it. I
always had a tendency to get impatient with my systems after setting a
process or backup to run, but this week I had a good "other" example in
wanting to go back to the doctor as I didn't think the bloomin'
antibiotics were working. They are, just took most of the week, perhaps
my not asking the doctor what to expect did not help. At any rate, I
finally seem to have stopped coughing, more or less, just don't know if
that is the prescription medication or the Nyquil knockoff I got at
Walmart, after the Mucinex knockoff from Safeway did nothing. We'll
never know now, will we? But less sleepless nights are massively
welcome, tellya...
If a sinus infection wasn't enough, the antibiotics they gave me
took me off my "normal" arthritis medication, so now I have gobs of pain
and discomfort and pills hanging over my head. For weeks, too. Owell.
Been there, done that.
Dreary rainy days, but then it stopped freezing, back to "normal" Pacific Northwest temps,
if, in the day and age of global warming, you can speak of normal any
more. Still coughing a bit, though much less than before, it certainly
does not keep me awake any more. Hopefully, especially since I am
temporarily off immuno-suppressants, the antibiotics will have done what
they were supposed to. I'll just have to be patient and give it another
week, see if I need to go back to the GP, or report to the specialist
and go back on regular medication.
As it turns out this is the week when I end up running around doing
doctor visits - eye checkup, and then two specialists decided to move my
appointments from next week to this week, meaning a mad scramble to get
the blood work done in time. Better to do it now, if I move to
January I'll end up paying out the deductibles for next year, losing the
compensation available now. I seem to be doing OK with the new budget,
this despite the holiday shopping, and then of course as of January the
health insurance rate comes down quite a bit. I won't know for sure
until I get an apartment, but perhaps we're over the hump.
If you're wondering why the "early" preparations, I have plenty of time,
and am a firm believer in maintenance and getting ready. It was clear
to me, years ago, that aging is best done in a city, where there is a
support infrastructure suburbs and rural communities simply don't have. I
note folks depending on kids and family - by the time that becomes a
chore for them this may not be a good idea - or on their church, but
since I decided to stay in the US (my retiree health plan doesn't cover
me where most of my family is) I'll need to find a different solution,
and that's easier in the cityscape. Seattle would not have been my first choice, but I am here and the place is nothing if not affluent.
Blogging becomes far less interesting now that the amount of
cyber-criminality has increased to the point that you can't talk about
half your life - even the name of the manufacturers of your network
equipment is sufficient for a mediocre hacker to attack your network. I
seem to spend half my life turning off internet capabilities on the
equipment I use - Microsoft is a perfect example, I've so far spent more
than a day just finding all of the settings in the "updated" Windows 10
where Microsoft pushes your data into their Cloud, the default setting
in at least 100 different "rules" is that they can. Your data in Microsoft's Cloud
means two things: you have no control over the security, and Microsoft
reserves the right, by virtue of your using their software, to parse any
and all personal information you may have on their server network, even if you have never agreed
or activated that the contents of your personal computer can be stored
there. That agreement and the activation are default in Windows now.
I tell you cutting over from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 is not easy - you
try and keep the applications you've been using, but in some cases that
simply does not work. The worst example is that suddenly, I was no
longer able to copy bunches of files from one device to another - after a
bit, it would slow down, then hang. While I found similar complaints
about Windows 10 in Microsoft's support forums, none of the Microsoft
sanctioned solutions there made a blind bit of difference. After
uninstalling my virus scanning software, and turning off Windows
Defender, still no joy. Then I went into the Windows Event Log, and came
across a few instances where XnView (the file manager I use) got hosed
up in the same way, but it pointed at a cause: Arcsoft's TotalMedia TV
tuner package I was using, one I have a valid key for. Somehow, that
alters the way files are handled, so it can write MPEG video DVDs from a
TV stream, how exactly I can't tell you. So after uninstalling
both Arcsoft and XnView, uninstalling Q360 and Microsoft defender
antivirus, some of it manually, the file transfers came back to normal.
Then, of course, one of the uninstalls demolished my HP DVD drive
software, which didn't come back by itself, at least until I uninstalled
all of its drivers, and it somehow found a different version on the
internet - just in time, I was about to boot from a cloned disk and do
the whole thing all over again. I now built XnView back - an older
version, though, I had noticed the latest update was a bit "weird" - and
once that was finally able to access the huge movie directories I have
on an external disk, put the antivirus software back (but not Microsoft
Defender). It isn't easy, but Microsoft does let you disable that
through its "group policy editor", if you don't do that and you install
another antivirus package, that tries to disable Defender, but somehow
that doesn't work, my guess is Microsoft changed the API code between
two versions of Windows 10, like users don't have a tough enough time.
Funny how these old PCs I hung on to come in handy - I discovered I am
running out of disk space, in that one NAS drive is over 50%, the other
75% full, and this stuff builds up quickly. So I decided to get a 3TB
drive to put into my Vaio, use that, semi-temporarily, to store 1.3TB of
camera data, and keep that going until I can get a bigger NAS drive
(this isn't data I normally need), and it can sit there until I have a
bigger NAS drive. I am thinking (after I move...) to get a four bay
version of the two bay Zyxel I have - with 3TB drives, under RAID 5, I'd
end up with 9 usable TB under "true" RAID. I can then buy 2 new 8TB
drives for my original Zyxel, which could run mirrored under RAID10.
Eventually. It will be interesting to see how the old Vaio will do under
the new incarnation of Windows 10 - assuming its BIOS will even talk to
a 3TB boot drive. I have enough knowledge now to be able to
tweak the Windows 10 Pro with 2017 Fall Creators Update, but keeping its
insides clean is so much of a headache that running it in server mode
is out of the question. But it will be fun to use it for storage, Sony
really did a nice design job on the motherboard. Especially turning off
Windows Defender, and perhaps disabling WiFi as well, should give it
some extra CPU cycles. And I just noticed that one of my UPS units is
recognized by Windows 10 - previous versions did not. So perhaps I'll
get lucky and it will run in battery mode again, where you have more
control over the power settings.
I mentioned earlier I could no longer use my TV tuner software - Windows
Media Center no longer is part of Windows, one reason I stuck with
Windows 8.1 for so long, and now I find I cannot use both Arcsoft Total
Media and Xnview together under the new flavour of Windows 10. So I
scoured the internet for hours, to end up with something free called SichboPVR,
which is amazingly powerful, quite well designed, but running in a way I
have not seen Windows software run before (no, it doesn't come from
China, but from Nova Scotia, in Canada). That has my concern, but at the
same time, if there are new ways of putting applications under Windows,
with lots of power but a low load, that ought to be a good thing. I am
assuming this is part and parcel of lightweight devices, tablets, the
Surface, stuff like that. I'll need to learn how this stuff works, but
so far I am not seeing anything untoward, no weird things across the
firewall, not like I am seeing from the Faleemi IP camera, which
constantly reaches out to a Chinese address and Amazon's AWS,
even though I have disabled its cloud capabilities. I'll share the
addresses with you, and will ask support folks what that is about, no
internet device should "reach out" across the firewall, after
establishing your backbone IP address, even several routers out. This is
the problem with the "internet of things", which is massively unsafe...
Tuesday December 5, 2017: Updating, backing up, more maintenance than production
Keywords: Windows 10 Pro, Bluetooth, keyboard, SSD, large
drives, Windows Device Manager, Fall Creators Update, Microsoft, VAIO,
SHA, apartment
Something else I just discovered is that after you install Windows 10's Fall Creators Update, it will no longer let you make a Repair Disk
(DVD). It wants you to supply a Windows Install Disk. I've not
experimented with it, but as I installed the update from a Creators ISO
image on DVD, I used that, and that worked. Of course, that meant
connecting an external DVD drive, but otherwise did the trick. Don't do
this, and you can create backups 'till the cows come home, but I'll bet
the "old" repair disk may not work. Don't find out the hard way... I've
seen on at least two of my machines the official update - through the
Update section of the Settings menu - never completes, and ends up in an
endless loop. Others, at Microsoft's forums, had the same
experience. Moderators suggested to download the update using their
Media Creation Tool, and then either update from there, or burn an
update DVD. Both of those work, I can report.
OK... Vaio all set up and ready for cloning - I keep forgetting that
cloning requires you to take the boot password off a hard drive -
Acronis doesn't tell you, and the clone process just fails. And I have
tweaked its Windows 10 install so its settings mirror those of my other
Win10 machines. I even ran a trial clone to a smaller disk - last time I
cloned Acronis found a Bitlocker encrypted drive, not involved
in the cloning, and would not run. Same for the security cam Toshiba,
all tweaked, running just fine. I still would like to set that up with
the Intel SSD, but that so far will not boot off the clone.
Correction: I just got that working, completely re-initializing the SSD,
then cloning, and now it works. Cool. I expect I ran something on it
you're not supposed to use on SSD's, but recent Intel diagnostics
indicated the SSD is in fine shape, with 100% life left. It came in one
of the reconditioned HP laptops I bought, but it makes this anemic Toshiba Satellite
fly. And tomorrow the big drive for my VAIO gets here, so I'll have the
backup system all ready. Actually, the Toshiba is now dedicated to
camera surveillance, what with the SSD it no longer has any moving
parts, I did buy an external automatic cooling fan for it, so it can run
24/7. Must say Windows 10 Pro runs well on it, I think it was initially
designed for Windows 7, found it at Best Buy in an "unboxed" bin in
2015. It was either find some use, or chuck it. "100% life left" for the
SSD is interesting - it is true it has no moving parts, but my
engineering expertise tells me there has to be some deterioration, over
time. The heat generated in the laptop - in this case it sat in a small
form factor HP Elitebook for years, and that is a machine that can run
hot - must cause some "wear and tear".
Back to the Vaio, an "All-In-One" bought in 2009 for $730 (not to
mention $113 for 4GB of RAM), which came with a Sony warranty that made
someone come to my house to replace the motherboard free of charge after
I blew it up, a 3TB drive and Windows 10's latest update seem to have
given this old thing wings. Now to transfer 1.63TB of dashcam archives
onto it.. As with Internet of Things and cellphones, these devices
generate rivers of data that I think the average person has no way of
storing - this is just three years of dashcam video! I know the
providers want you to use their Cloud space for storage, so they can
make you pay when you run out of the "free" offering, but I think the
majority of consumers can't afford that kind of storage, and the NAS
drive I am just freeing up had 4TB of storage, and is, at this point, to
all intents and purposes full up. That is not, BTW, a drive with old
archives, it has some stored data, the dashcam stuff, and a backup from
my main laptop, which, admittedly, has about a terabyte of data on it.
The longer you use these things, the more data you have, and for the lay
person, it becomes impossible to store. Under Windows 10, it becomes so
bad that Microsoft logs you in with your personal email without
your knowledge or approval, and starts storing your files in their Cloud
automatically. Once there, they can parse (read) your data, your use of
their Cloud means you approve of that. Connect to the internet, give
Windows 10 your email address, and you give up your privacy.
Not too bad a weekend, all in all. I had my annual medical assessments
on Friday, after a bunch of tests earlier in the week, and everything
appears "just peachy", specialists down at The Polyclinic all happy, and
me too. And on Saturday I received a notice from the Housing Authority I
am back on the waiting list - no indication how long that will be, but
last time it was quicker than I expected, six months or so, perhaps I'll
get lucky, a guy can dream, right? Especially the Ballard location
appeals to me, although, when I went to a gym there, I think I was the
only over-40 in the gym, very different from LA fitness in the 'burbs.
Sunday December 10, 2017: Life and Liberties
Keywords: chum salmon, keta salmon, omega-3, cough medicine, HP Elitebook, Blu-Ray, Media Center
Omega 3
Not so bad, then - December is here, I've pretty much finished
everything I wanted to, although there are a couple of things on car
maintenance I haven't done, not huge though. But suddenly it is too cold
to work on the car out in the open - though the next sunny day I do
need to change the oil, per my own schedule. But some of the more
important stuff, like restoring my credit rating, and filing a housing
application - one does not go without the other - got done this year,
and for that I should be grateful. Not a word I use a lot, grateful.
But I guess I managed to survive the financial collapse without having
to file bankruptcy, survived my bout with cancer, and am slowly on the
up, so what can I tell you, light at the end of the tunnel.
Switching my two HP Elitebooks was a good move. The 2570p with the fast
processor has more oomph than the 2560p, itself no slouch, and running
Windows Media Center on it continuously really made it harder to do
other tasks. It still does that, but is no longer used for anything
else, except storage. And I just managed to get the 2570p to play BluRay
disks using VLC, something I had not managed before, and that means I
can record those, too, with the Buffalo external BD writer I have. Kewl.
Just played a bit of Ender's Game, and must say on my Seiki 4K-UHD
screen that looks fantabulous. And the laptop isn't going off like a fan
heater on fire, despite driving two hi-res screens. Now, if I can get
the older version of PowerDVD with a patch running, so I can play my
HD-DVDs, I'd be even happier. Necessary it isn't, but I would like to
reinstall the Cyberlink Suite I bought years ago, as that will write
BD's (BluRay disks), although I have only the one drive, and so have
never used those for storage. My experience with optical drives
has been varied - I had a magneto-optical jukebox in the lab that worked
great for years, but where self-writing optical drives are concerned,
you don't know that they have failed until you lose your data, and with
the BD disks, that can be 25GB. That's a lot. And at the same time, not
enough for any kind of a full backup. Say what you like, magnetic hard
drive technology has become very reliable - make sure they're level and
don't overheat, and you are fine for many years - I have, in recent
years, only had one 1TB Hitachi drive go south on me, and as it
announced its impending demise by getting noisy, Acronis and its
built-in error correction were able to correct and recover every last
byte of data from it. I still believe that its failure may have been
caused by the Lenovo laptop it lived in running hot, caused mostly by
Microsoft's Windows Media Center. Only recently have I begun running
Media Center on a separate, dedicated laptop, not on my main production
machine (where it would not run under Windows 10 anyway).
Thursday, December 14, 2017: Damn! Not the "device" again!
Keywords: Bluetooth, touchpad, keyboard, Rapoo, Blü Studio
XL, Ebay, Blackberry, Volvo, AI, Artificial Intelligence,
transportation, traffic
While many of the Bluetooth keyboards I've bought shared a more or less severe timeout problem, I finally found one
(with a built-in touchpad) that does let you turn off the timeouts
completely, although that now means I have to charge it every day, or it
will "hang up" without warning. It works fine, and the multitouch
actually works well, and a daily charge ought not to be rocket science,
as I do that with my cellphones. The keys are set fairly close together,
and the layout isn't quite standard, but I know from experience that's a
matter of time, let the grey cells learn. That's actually a good
exercise for the brain, which you can train to get used to many things,
it is just that you need to actually do that, rather than talk about it.
Of course, just as I've finished Christmas shopping and have returned
some purchases and am trying not to go overboard, and to end 2017 in the
plus, I find that my Blackberry Z10's microphone does not work. Headset
microphones do, but my bag of tricks can't get it going. In the past,
I've had the Blackberry log onto a Bluetooth headset by itself, and
disable the built-in audio, but this time I think it may be the jack
socket that has given up. I can try to fix that, but do not want to do
that on a live phone, so there is little else than to buy a new handset.
I'll try a refurbished Blü
from Ebay first, I've had my eyes on that for a while, nice 6" display,
Android here we come. It was time to do that anyway, so many apps no
longer run on Blackberry handsets, as secure and convenient as they are.
Fingers crossed..
Ah.. well, OK, it looks like one of the microphones in the Blackberry is
out, but not the other. Crackberry folks have it that's easily remedied
by replacing the screen, which has all of those bits built in, so once I
have the Blü and set it up, I can take the Blackberry offline and fix
it, and then I can figure out what to do with the superfluous handset. I
may end up... well, I'll tell you when it happens. The Blackberry Z10
has always been a great standby for me to get internet service when
cable or FIOS is down or not available - I have both Bluetooth
networking and Hotspot mode on it, where it becomes a (blisteringly
fast) internet access point. First the Blü, if it is in good shape, that
will take some work to set up. A 6 inch screen can't be bad - this
isn't the size I really want, but the problem with what apps I need to
use is that they're written for tablet sized units - complete with a
propensity to take over the full screen. Run things on a laptop and
you're constantly resizing the browser window - websites used to conform
to the size of the browser window, but no more. Open Facebook in a
small windows, and you cant even see the logout "button" - but then,
Facebook really does not want you to log out..
Autonomous Design
So my take on all this is that if you want to create a new mode of transportation, an autonomous vehicle,
you probably need to design that from scratch, and not retrofit
technology on an existing concept that was designed for a different
purpose - being able to be operated by hu-mans. Reading how, in the past
few days, public transport in large parts of the Netherlands has been
brought to a complete standstill due to winter storms, what makes you
think an autonomous bus could cope with that? However much Google and
IBM want you to believe there is Artificial Intelligence, there is no
AI, today, that is even remotely capable of doing what a human brain is
able to achieve - and that, my friends, is what all cars, boats, planes,
trucks and trains are designed for. Thinking you can build a self
driving taxi by sticking eighteen cameras and a conning tower on top and
a computer in the trunk is just so many shades of stoopid.
Autonomous transportation devices need to be custom designed for their
purpose, will require their own infrastructure, not designed for humans -
what works for our brains with our input/output does not work for
computers - and we may end up having to develop a more analog way of
computing to have autonomous vehicles travel from A to B. I've said it
before, but let me endlessly repeat it: there is no such thing as
"artificial intelligence", there is only intelligence. Whether that is
human or in some other "carrier" is really not relevant. Best we write a
workable definion of "intelligence", and stop thinking we can build
software that can somehow "emulate" our brains. That is not what
intelligence is all about, and our brains have taken too long to develop
that you can somehow reinvent that process in twenty years. Machines
may well be able to develop a kind of intelligence that far surpasses
anything we can do, but letting them play chess is not the way to get
there - games do not require intelligence, they're more the province of
the narrow-minded...
Sunday, December 17, 2017: Some toys work, others not so much
Keywords: touchpad, keyboard, Rapoo, Blü Studio XL, Ebay, Blackberry, Microsoft, health care, Teva, pharmaceuticals
Cool thing, this refurbished Blü 6" smartphone I got at Ebay, from an outfit by the name of Breed.
Refurbished, but looking like new inside and out, new unblemished
software load, and it took my micro-SIM, the one that was in my
Blackberry, without question, same form factor, got lucky. It arrived a
day early, yesterday in the mail, and with permissions setting and
testing, I just finished setting it up, midday the next day. Android now
lets you set permissions and security in gory detail - I am completely
paranoid about the amount of data collection that goes on with the big
internet companies, but it appears Google have seen the light and at
least made the security settings fully accessible. $125 new at Amazon,
the first class refurbished version set me back $85, which is reasonable
if not cheap. The massive, 4900mAh lithium-polymer battery (by
comparison, the replacable lithium-ion battery in my Blackberry has
1800mAh) is hardwired, but then that may last as long as the handset -
past handsets, with smaller replacable batteries, I've often had a spare
for. This battery took six hours to charge from empty. Still testing,
will tell you as and when I find anything worthy of reporting. My reason
for buying a 6" display is simply that so many websites are now geared
for tablets - they look like shit on a PC browser, and the same on a
small phone. The picture to the right is the first shot out of the Blü -
unprocessed, full size, and without the upscale settings available in
the unit. I'll show you that in the next post. I apologize for the size
of the file, 1.5Mb, you can click on it to see it full size, can't show
you the quality if I reduce it, now, can I..
So this Rapoo Bluetooth keyboard
really does well, for as long as I can rember to charge it. It is
actually the first Bluetooth keyboard with built-in touchpad where I can
actually use the multi-touch feature, on four other keyboards I
could never manage that. So I guess the technology and chipset (and
price) do have something to do with it. The touchpad is larger than the
others', too, and especially the ability to finally completely turn off
the timeouts is a Godsend. Using an external keyboard makes the laptop
last much, much longer, although parts for these Elitebooks are all over
Amazon and Ebay, and mostly ridiculously easy to replace, kudos to HP,
in love with these machines. Now, of course, having gotten used to the
tap-and-keystroke method, I have to wean myself off that and onto
multitouch. The number of ways you can control display is unbelievable.
Booting up this morning, my laptop is not happy, and it installed some
Microsoft updates yesterday I did not know about. I have no way of
knowing whether it is Microsoft's update that ripped my system, I
noticed it install an update when I tried to power down and Windows
would not let me. To be honest, this is not a good way to deal with
customers, doing things to your system without letting you know, and
then interfering with your routine without warning. And sure enough,
there was an anomalous bootup this morning, then my system hung,
completely, twice, and next, I was not able to do any kind of backup,
using robocopy or AIS. My external 2TB backup drive got ripped in the
process, would no longer mount on ESATA, and it is now sitting on
another laptop running an 8 hour diagnostic. It is technically possible
my backup drive "sprung a leak", it is an old 2TB external drive that
has seen a lot of service, and if a drive fails, it is usually during
startup. But I am more inclined to think Microsoft's update, and the
asinine automated way in which this is now run, while you're doing
normal work on your computer, without Microsoft really knowing what else
is going on in the system, that last, big, "Creators" update Microsoft
presented wouldn't even install automatically, and would not let the
user know there was a problem - yes, I saw that go belly-up on all three
systems it tried to install on. Coinciding with a huge Microsoft effort
to extract more of your personal data through their operating system,
it very much looks like they are breaking it, and not just occasionally.
The amount of time, this month, spent on updating, upgrading, and
repairing Microsoft's mistakes is astonishing. I just spent another hour
going through device drivers in Device Manager, which, since they are
on a laptop, have their "turn off to save power" flag set by default,
without ever a notification to the user. With USB 2.0 this was not so
much of a problem, but due to its speed, US 3.0 is used much more, for
file transfer, backup and the like, and that, too, gets a'time
oututo-turned-off. On SATA ports, this was not a problem, they don't
"time out", but now it is. All attempts at backing up via USB3 failed,
as the drives never turn back on, solved now though. Maybe Microsoft
needs to hire its testers back... Yes, some of these entries probably
date back to the Windows 7 Ultimate I have on the Lenovo this operating
systems load was built and updated on top of, but people do that, that's
how you, with Microsoft's connivance, maintain your legitimate license key.
So: if you use a laptop (or, like my Sony Vaio desktop, a PC based on
laptop technology, and you might not know that), it pays, if you have
issues with devices connected to ports on your computer (USB, Bluetooth,
card ports, anything external to your system), right click on START
(bottom left hand side of your screen), go to the Device Manager, click
on View, then select "show hidden devices", then find any and all
entries that might be related to whatever device it is you're having
problems with, and see if it has a power option set in "properties". If
it does, turn it off. Don't stop until you find them all, some are in
weird places.
How do you lose a quarter of your staff?
Wednesday, December 20, 2017: Cheap mobiles are just fine
Keywords: Blü Studio XL, Blackberry, Galaxy, Android, Christmas, eyesight, big data
Finally managed to concentrate on getting the dang Christmas cards, but
in the throes of setting up my new phone for the second time, will have
to relegate writing the cards tomorrow, post office the day after, I
guess. Doesn't really matter if they arrive before or after Christmas -
besides, my sister's birthday is just short of Christmas, and others I really am sending New Year's cards.... It'll be fine.
Something I like about the newer versions of Android is that you can set
their access permissions in gory detail. The mail app on the Blü, for
instance, wants access to everything, and when you turn some of it off
it won't even start. That's cool - I got another mail application that
is more controllable, user friendly and security conscious. It is the
same under Windows, where some applications - LinkedIn comes to mind -
won't even let you log in without third party cookies enabled, because
LinkedIn allows folks who pay them to put cookies on your device so they
can track you, same thing Facebook does, if you do not log out,
especially on phones, Facebook addicts have their feed running 24/7,
just so they don't miss aunt Esther messing up her next batch of sugary
cookies. That's fine - that is why I've stopped using LinkedIn, which
today specializes in selling your intimate information to all and
sundry, I decline all "invitations" to Facebook Messenger, and a brief
sojourn with Facebook on my Blackberry tablet helped me discover that if
I did not give the FB app access to the camera, it would not run.
Clearly, software publishers are coming back from this, as lots of
influential folks stop sharing data with lots of enterprises.
People begin to understand why, when they've looked at refrigerators on
phones or laptops, they are bombarded with ads for white goods. Takes
seconds. Lots of comments from folks who feel they're being e-stalked,
which is true. And the thing is, as I have seen before upping my
security, when you buy a diving re-breather, everybody starts trying to
seel you scuba diving kit you already have. Remember that next time you
pay for "big data" - there is more the sellers do not know, than that
they do. Because if this data malarkey worked, they'd have started
selling me diving gear before I bought the re-breather. Which I
bought for a friend in Asia Pacific, who couldn't get that brand in his
home country there. So I was never going to buy any more, since I don't
dive. I don't like my air coming out of a bottle..
While I am waiting for a replacement screen+bezel for my Blackberry Z10,
this Blü smartphone is growing on me. I just have not decided what, if
any, apps to run on it, but there is time for that, I can check some of
the permissions on my older Galaxy. I need the Z10 to work, because it
has T-Mobile WiFi Calling, which I use overseas, where I then do not
incur call charges in the USA, or minutes. But the Blü, I did not
mention this, is a two line handset, so I can have both the TMO
SIM card and a local card in when traveling, and I believe it may work
in Japan, as well (the Blackberry does, Blackberry's were long the only
"international" handsets that could roam there). Plenty of reasons,
anyway, to fix the Z10, and keep it as a primary spare. But I
must say I am happy with the Blü's 6" screen - BTW, if you have older
family members with a smaller handset, get them the Blü, it is cheap and
they'll have a much easier time reading things, I notice especially
older people missing lots of information as they often do not know how
to go to landscape mode, or to increase the font size on their mobile,
and if they reduce the stuff on their screen they may not be able to
read it all. I had this at the optometrist's, the other day, could read
all of the reading matter on the test card, except for one word,
"bread". My eyes would not resolve the "r".
Actually, to come back to security, I can test apps on my Galaxy, which
normally lives in the car as a "locator", and functions as a dashcam
when I am driving. Once I've established an app does not mine my address
book, I can install that on the Blü. That puts paid to CaroProo, which
is webcam and car monitor, but mines the handset as well. Thankfully,
that lives on a handset without contact list or any other identifiable information.
I used to have that number in my Google set, but took it out of the
group a while ago. Now I have encrypted the entire handset, see how that
does - no, it isn't that I need that, just curious.
Sunday, December 24, 2017: Too Much Holiday
Keywords: Blackberry, Christmas, Windows 10, Seattle Housing Authority, repair, Amazon
And
after you get Christmas cards, of course, you soon run out, and you
think, like you do every year, that these things are ridiculously
expensive, but when you go back you find a "ten-fer" deal for $9.99,
and then when you get home you find they're not on the receipt.. Did put
them on the scale, but then I keyed in the wrong PIN, etc. etc. Did get
the shopping done, jug of well water, gym (skipped yesterday), and I've
got much of the system work done. Well, "system" work.. (later) gift
wrapping all done, my workout buddy wanted to go to the gym at 7am,
actually managed that, been a while since I got up really early, always
nice to make sure you can still do that. Imagine, getting on the road by
7am, office by 8, just to beat the traffic. Mind you, I worked from
home part of the week, best was Westchester County, NY, where I had a
ten minute commute to the lab. Not for nothing did the hoi polloi refer
to us as "the country club".
Windows 10 needs lots of tweaking
If you're wondering why now, I did install Windows 10 on a couple of my
systems, but have never used it in anger, until I recently decided to
cut over from my Windows 8.1 laptop to a similar laptop with Windows 10,
and then installed the Creators Update. I then had to do a fair amount
of debugging, partly because the version of Windows 10 they pre-loaded
on this machine was broken and vendor-crippled, and it took a bit of
doing to get it repaired, and working right. Thankfully I had a master
disk from another W10 system, that was able to repair the image. So some
stuff not working right is not a complete surprise. It does now, I just
need to make sure I have complete backups of all I have done.
After some tweaking, I reshot the street picture you've seen below, the
result is to the right. If you click on the pic, you'll get a full size
version, duly processed by yours truly, that's about 4Mb in size, the
linked version here is 260k. This just to give you an idea of how well
the Blü does, here is a winter sun, below a rainy gray day.
Other
than that, it is pretty much a waiting game. A friend tried to connect
me with a Microsoft contracting opportunity, but then the external
recruiter (who listed himself as an engineer) kept emailing me to send
him a resume, even though both my friend and myself had pointed out to
him where in this website the resume is (if you have a hard time finding
it, it is at the link where it says "resume" at the top of this page),
but apparently can "do a lot for me" for as long as I send him my
resume. I would think he'd look at it from the link, come back to me
with opportunities, if he makes his living recruiting experts for MS,
gotta tell you that if Microsoft uses these kinds of people to find
knowledgeable staff, I don't give much for their efforts. He got to me
because he asked my friend to recommend telecommunications experts, so
he does not seem to be too able to find those himself. I've seen many
recruiters like that, over the years, "send your resume" broken record,
then you never hear from them again, no comment, not even a thank you.
Best of luck.
I said "waiting game" - had I gotten a consulting position, of course, I
would have ended up outside of the cap for a Seattle SHA apartment. I
don't mind that that much, but if the gig gets canceled or otherwise
does not work out, that would not be fun. So I think I have little
option but to wait for SHA, and continue making preparations for when
that happens. But that brings me to my budget, something I have always
maintained in my financial software, but not to the gory accuracy I do
now. Especially in the past year, as I recovered my credit rating, I
needed to know exactly how much money I was spending, and on what, so I
could calculate how much money I will need and have once I rent an
apartment, and what a credit card did to my outgoings. It had been
relatively simple since I lost my credit, I knew what was coming in, and
how much my savings were growing (or not), but a credit card is dealt
with, in software, as "available cash", when, in fact, it is not. So I
spent quite a bit of time working out how to lump credit spending into
"petty cash", so as to make sure it automatically fit within my budget.
That was not simple, but I think I've cracked it. I think I am riding
out the year with the same money I had coming into it, which is not bad,
considering a green card renewal and dental surgery were considerable
expenses, and the insurance repercussions from a broken garage door did
not help (goodbye Met Life).
Lots of repair kits
Picture left has my slightly broken Blackberry Z10, as well as the replacement bezel & touch screen
(left) and the tools that came with that, $18.95 in all. This is the
second time I am fixing a cellphone, something I did not used to do, but
the repair kits, accompanied by truly excellent instructional videos on
Youtube, are available on Amazon and Ebay for just about anything
you've ever bought. Now I will wait a bit until I take my contact lenses
out, in the morning - the screws and bits are teensy to the point that I
think my eyes + bifocals, for this, will work better than my eyes +
monovision contacts. I need to put in a new pair, anyway - my
optometrist is fine with me wearing one pair for a couple of months,
rather than the intended one month, but you can eventually tell the
lenses are getting grungy. Still, I only go through six pairs a year,
which costs $60 with shipping. That's $5 a month. Not at all bad.
Hopefully the information I have is correct, and the microphone that
isn't working in the Blackberry is really broken, and part of the bezel.
I've got the replacement phone, anyway, so a worry it is not. While I
am at it, I'll replace the rear facing camera, which was never good in
focus, for $6.95. No wonder the Chinese are filthy rich...
I
am wondering how many of the ills of society we could cure by starting
at the beginning - educating and training children. While the number of homeless
in King County (which includes the city of Seattle) seems to have
settled around 10,000, in an affluent area with a bit over 2 million
inhabitants, headquartering, amongst others, Microsoft, Amazon and
Costco, with one of Boeing's largest factories.
I am not trying to over-simplify, but with a median household income of
some $65,000 a year, Seattle is no longer a place where you can live
cheaply, and so more and more people fall off the bottom rung, if you
will. With no way of ever getting back on the ladder, which, once they
spiral into drug use and alcoholism, becomes increasingly difficult,
especially with the amount of age discrimination in the Puget Sound tech
jobs market. Even an auto mechanic needs to be computer conversant,
today, and I see people who think being able to Google something
qualifies them for a management job, and if you ask them if they can put
together a website they'll say "yes", and if you then ask them if you
can look at some of the code they use in their webpage - poof. Not that
you have to write code on my account, but using Wordpress is not
really "web design". Apart from anything else, Wordpress gets hacked
every weekend, they then issue a fix in an update, and two weeks later
it happens all over again. The Wordpress install on my webserver got
hacked twice in a month - and this is a Wordpress installation I don't
even use, I had tried to resurrect an old database a year or two ago. It
provides a great platform for many folks, but if you're looking for
security, not so much. This is one reason I use raw HTML, which I write
myself. No scripts, no executables, nothing to hack.
But Merry Christmas, all - here in the Puget Sound area, we're having a
White Xmas, it started snowing around 5pm on Christmas Eve. Biblical,
almost. I hope - but that may or may not happen - that by the time I
write atcha here in a year's time, I'll be in an apartment in Seattle "proper".
Waiting list, kind of thing. It is frustrating I've taken so long to
get to this point, I lost my home and my savings in 2011, after all, but
that's what it took, and I tried everything to make it go faster, which
didn't work very much.
I
still need to figure out how to stop the Faleemi IP camera from talking
to its creators in China, without my approval, but I have at least
found a public domain piece of software
that works well, and talks to practically every remote camera on the
planet. Quite a sophisticated package, iSpy is much more versatile than
some of the other "free" applications I have tried, which, for the most
part, won't talk to a "standard" IP video stream - do some research, and
you'll find there are multiple standards for streaming video, and if
you want to stay away from the hackable web interfaces in port 80 and
port 8080, more secure and obscure solutions are available. The main
problem with port 80 is that that is the standard (http:) web
interface, and you can't firewall it off as that is how webpages come to
you from the outside world. iSpy, at least, you can set up so it stays
inside your network, and you can use ports the outside world can't
"see", provided the firewall on your router is active. Best, and
easiest, by the way, is to learn some router management, buy a router
you can control completely, learn how to set it up and use it, and hang
that router off the one the cable or telephone company has installed.
You should change the password and firewall settings on that router, but
for many people that router handles both internet and TV, so you
probably don't want to mess with it too much. The router you installed
behind it is fully controllable by you, and that's where you should have
your network connected. If nothing else, a second router makes it hard
for hackers to get to your systems, and they look on the first router,
which is how most people connect to the internet. If you really want
secure, use one provider just for internet, and then replace their
router with your own, of a different brand, one they can't control from
their head end. Then replace their DNS with someone else's (Google comes
to mind, you can look that up with your favourite search engine), so
they can't track your address requests.
As you can see in the picture above, my Blackberry Z10 is entirely repaired - with a new bezel,
it looks like it just came from the factory. It is sitting in a
charging cradle, for now it is a very nice alarm clock, the Z10 has
something called "bedside mode" which has a very soft amber glow, then
wakes you up with white light and a choice of noises. Never fails.
Anyway, the Z10 works, having been factory-reset, like a banshee,
too, except the problem - one non-working microphone - hasn't been
resolved. I now think it may be the headphone jack (the new bezel had
two new microphones) and I've got that on order. $4.20 from Brooklyn,
with shipping. No, I don't mind - what with the Youtube instructions,
and all of the teensy tools in the repair kit, it is really simple and
quick. I had the bezel replaced inside of half an hour - could have done
it quicker if I hadn't kept dropping the screws... Doing it with the
bifocals on (and off), rather than the monovision in, did help. Now I am
going to have to do it all over again, when the replacement jack
arrives. I did replace its rear facing camera, which never worked right,
it is the size of the tip of your pinkie, I kid you not. If you're
wondering if this is a Verizon Blackberry, it isn't, it is a GSM/4GLTE
version, but the bezel came with the VZ logo. That does not, being a Verizon retiree, bother me at all.
Although I am writing much of this in the "old" year, you're reading it
in the fresh, untainted year - that Trump fella was a bit of a surprise,
wasn't he? Much like the previous president, whose arrival was - for
his first term - a bit unexpected as well. I keep on wondering if we're
as polarized as all that - I an only aware of one acquaintance who is a rabid Trump
supporter, I eventually unfriended him, but that was more because of
his frequently very offensive and ultra-biased posts. I suppose if
you're a successful scientist, have too much money and can afford to be a
high tier member of the Knights of Columbus you don't need to
understand how the other half thinks any more. At least the blue collar
folk in my neigbourhood are mostly just simple Christians (none of them
Trump voters, either, curiously). Trump isn't doing a bad job of it, I
must say, especially now that most of the wankers have left his
administration. Just the Kushners to go, and he will be an Almost Real
person, instead of a realtor with a family firm.
Anyway, that isn't why we're here, but we are taking some of the baggage
into 2018. Everybody everywhere finally accepting the Australians had
it right, and preventing the "refugees" from landing - and shipping back
the illegals, here, despite their excuses - is a good development in my
book. Contrary to belief, there are plenty of would-be carpenters and
plumbers in this country, those just weren't professions anybody went to
study for, because all there was, the other end, were Middle- and South
Americans undercutting you. It seems every other refugee is an
Uber driver now, which indicates we're not making much of an effort
creating jobs for them, and they'll work for food. If you followed the
Uber saga, they started out as a nice employer, where you could make
decent money, and then began cutting wages and making more demands of
their workers, which had to be contractors with rights. A recent article
in the New York Times higlighted the travails of Yellow Cab drivers -
and those were often hard working immigrants, now undercut by their own
kind. Good? Bad? I don't know.
By the way, allowing North Korea to take part in the Winter Olympics
would be major stupid. They're under sanction, so they are under
sanction, they want to come to any international meet, give up all
nuclear arms. Until they do, no strategic imports, no Olympics, fancy
cars, caviar, nothing. There is a long history, with many dictators
(remember Hitler?) that olive branches backfire. Don't.
Still can't get the microphone in the Blackberry to work, I wonder if I
need to just forget fixing that - with a headset, the thing is fine. I
did - somehow - manage to get the HDMI audio on my Seiki 4K display
panel to work again, although I have no idea why it sometimes would not.
Between that and convincing my Bluray setup I actually have a 3D
display, and some tweaking, I've actually got the 4K running at peak
performance. Curiously, in order to get a properly sharp image, you have
to turn "sharpness" in its engineering controls all the way to - 0! Go
figure.. and it turns out the VLC public domain video application
will play Bluray movies, I just had to spend a long time reading
everybody's suggestions, and after trying half a dozen or so, it
suddenly worked! I do own a Bluray player, but I like running things on
one of my PC screens while I use the other. Or I just like it when
things work..
Two warm, rainy days, but now the frost is back, they showed some
horrendous weather up in the mountains on the news this morning. Not as
bad as in the rest of the country, but still cold and icy enough. Even
so, it is sufficiently sunny that walking to the gym is pleasurable
enough, my doctors, happy enough that I keep working out, are insistent
that sunlight, daylight, and the resultant vitamin D and melatonin are
essential for health.
All in all, I've pretty much fixed everything that needed fixing, with
the exception of the Blackberry microphone, though the Blackberry I
don't need at the moment. When traveling, that's a different matter, but
I think I would do best focusing strictly on getting an apartment, and
saving a much as I can so I can do the move, furniture, and everything
else. I do need to get my crown replaced, it came out when I had a fall,
but that's really all, and my new dentist thinks he can get the crown
in place without the root canal all other dentists seem to insist on.
There was a crown there, and the tooth is fine, so I am going to thank
my lucky stars I found an honest dentist.
Posting a Yelp link here, since I discovered if you send a Yelp link to
a Google Mail user, Google puts that in their spam box. Not a good (or
legal) way to deal with the competition. Must say the change from the HP
Elitebook 2560p to the faster 2570p has done wonders, it turns out the
Windows Media Center I am running on the 2560 is truly a resource hog,
and I now have another application that lets me watch TV using an ATSC dongle,
while the 2560 records stuff I've programmed, programming I then store
on the NAS drive and stream to whatever I am using. Little TV needs to
be watched live, and I've got working dongles on most of my systems now.
Having
spent what seems to be an inordinate amount of time working up a
budget, the year has turned, and that let me run a tax prep in my
finance software. Though I ended the year with pretty much the same sort
of savings I started, that is actually good news, what with a good
amount of "extra" expenditure in 2017 - some $1,500. So if I can just
manage to not get unexpected stuff - beyond the move - in 2018, I should
be fine. I can't say I've ever done a budget in such gory detail, but I
really needed to get better control of my finances, and it does look
like I have pared my expenditure to the point I have control - and
having credit again helps, though, for the apartment plans, I do not need
it beyond being able to pass a credit check with flying colours. Even
my Fico score, at long last, is green - though I discovered you don't
want to put too much on a new card, even if you do pay it off at the end
of the month. These days, you sneeze, you drop 20 points.
The most amazing bit of kit, in 2017, has been the Edgestar
heat pump, which I was able to test extensively while the housemates
were away for a month, and am currently using for auxiliary heat when I
am home. Running just one in auxiliary mode costs me (this has been all
heating, it being winter) 18 cents a day, that truly amazes me. The
drawback - it is noisy, but doesn't run all that much, and with its twin
hose system, does not take air from your environment, which is what
makes the difference. During my late summer test, where
temperatures were in the 70s and 80s, two of these units managed to cool
an entire 2,000 square foot bungalow, running 24/7, for an average
total of around $30 per month. Their "new and improved" models are now
marketed under the Avallon brand - as I write this, for around $500 with
the end-of-year discount. Heats (11,00 BTU), cools (14,000 BTU), and
the new models automatically switch from heating to cooling, something
that (not a joke) could be very useful in the desert.
Something that particularly interests me is how much water is generated
by these units. They have an evaporative system built in that gets rid
of the condensation you'll get in any heat pump / air conditioner, but
there is a drain built in, and something I want to do is use that to
capture the condensation and measure it. A heat pump that is used both
for cooling and heating produces condensation all year round,
during summer from the "output" heat exchanger, during winter from the
"input" heat exchanger, and it will be interesting to see how much that
is, averaged out, and what the monetary value is in an area where you
pay for water. Additionally, having one's own supply of non-chlorinated
clean water (say, run though a carbon filter jug like those available at
Wal-Mart) could be interesting - again, from heat pumps that are in use
all year round. So far, my heat pump provides ample heat even when the
outside air temperature is 24 degrees Fahrenheit (-5° Celsius) - heat
pumps didn't used to be able to do that. Anyway, drinking water is
something you need an everyday supply of, so getting that from a heat
pump in use all year would not be a bad idea, and what with the
efficiency of modern heat pumps, you would save some money buying water, whether that is from the utility or from the store.
So - did some more work on the Faleemi IP cam, and I have to tell you that it works very well, but it sends data to
places and networks for no reason at all, without any way to stop that.
Even after turning all protocols, except for RTSP, off, it still talks
to the outside world. RTSP is the protocol that lets my iSpy software
pull images and video from the camera, which does, by the way, have a
complete, quite sophisticated, server built in - but I've set up iSpy so
that it then stores images and video captures when motion is detected,
deliberately not using the camera's facilities for that. Those are then
uploaded to my web server, so that even if my PCs and network drives get
stolen during a heist, the thieves can't get the images, and I can. But
these cameras are set up to send data to the cloud, where you can then
access them, problem is, you have absolutely no control over where this
data goes, what it is, and who can get to it, they use IP addresses and
servers nobody has ever heard of. I've looked at the traffic on my
routers for several weeks now, and there are a bunch of IP addresses
that have no functionality to you at all, and as I said, it does
not matter what you turn off in the camera, it goes out there anyway.
Even the built in web server, when you access that from a PC,
immediately starts talking to someplace called lierda.com, without
asking or explaining. I've now firewalled it off from the outside world,
so it can only talk inside my protected network, but while it works, it
now has a blinking error light, even though there is no error, and
nothing in the error log, and we know what that means, right? Even - dig
this - the Faleemi app
on my Android phone, on the same network, will sometimes no longer talk
to the camera, and that indicates that it verifies with a server
"somewhere" before it will talk to the device, this is the app that
worked before, during setup. Not kosher, peeps. Thing is, how do we get
Trump to pay attention to this - because it is cybersecurity that will
stop North Korea, and right now they can just walk in the back door.
Internet of Things? Internet of Idiots, more like.
Anyway, what I wanted to do, set up a 24/7 surveillance system that
stores captures on a remote server, I've done. I have to say the Faleemi
IP camera works well, can power off the USB port of a laptop, its
software is superb, mobile apps work, if it weren't for its propensity
to connect to overseas networks it'd be great. And it is, like the NAS
drives I bought before, pre-programmed to connect to networks you have
no control over, and don't need. Yes, it is nice to share pictures or
home surveillance with your auntie in Huangzou, but that is not
likely to be the reason why you bought a storage device or surveillance
cam. None of these are set up so they are secure, with all of the ports
closed, and remote logins disabled, and that is how they should be
delivered. I can even make this work, battery driven, over a cellphone,
so you're not dependent on your home or building internet for your
security to work, but if you can't do network programming, you're at the
mercy of manufacturers who do not have your security uppermost in their
list. I've bought a NAS driver and a netowkr printer which would not
install unless I set myself up on their network, with my email address. I
had quite a bit of work "breaking" the installation software so I could
bypass this invasive "registration", and Windows 10 still complains I
have not installed my printer driver software (which I did, but
manually).
Because: criminals learn technology too, and Comcast puts a large sign
outside of your house when you buy their security system, so the
criminals know how to access and disable your detectors and cameras. In
the olden days, an alarm company sign meant burglars would try somewhere
else, in 2017, it means the security system is on the internet, you can
look up what local head end serves the house, hire a hacker, who will
disable the routers for you, and you can go in. Job done.
Ah. Saturday. I ought to put the "revamped" Blackberry back in use, with
the new Bluetooth earset, now that I have replaced some of its innards.
The primary reason is that I found the Blackberry, as a WiFi access point
is much faster than any other smartphone I have, I am just going to
have to use my new Blü on the "home" line, retiring the Nokia. That's
done well, but the casing is a bit chipped, and I can go back to using
Paypal with two factor authentication, which the older version of
Windows Mobile on the Lumia does not support. It is useful to have a
much later version of Android in the house, it can handle all of the
applications I need, and I can finetune the permissions on it, stopping
apps from mining my address database, for instance. That too is cool on
the Blackberry - using my Google contacts database on that does not
allow Google to exchange data with it, I feel invaded every time the
contacts database under Android adds pictures of people without asking
me. Call me deluded, but when they're in my database, I normally know what they look like. Institutionalized voyeurism.
Changes in Facebook? I find, increasingly, folks in my friends lineup
becoming more forceful in their postings, but the majority seem to spend
vast amounts of time reading things and then reposting them. Hobby horses
- anti-Trump, or the kids, or the grandkids, or people posting pictures
with useless credos, often mistakenly attributed to the Buddha or the
Dalai Lama, apparently an image of typed words is more powerful than
typed words. I never had a Facebook app on a "device", but find the
environment boring to the point I access once a day to see if I have
messages, and after three minutes of drivel sign off. I know you love
your grandkids, but if you've got nothing better to do than posting
endless pictures of them.. Dunno, maybe I am too harsh, but we used to
talk about things, and now there's just endless reposting of people
going off on Donald Trump, or posting something about the family every
other day, prefaced by "God is Good". A lot of folks posting things that
were in the news three days ago, or last month, preferably without any
explanation or commentary. What with everybody having eighteen news
feeds on their three devices, posting "news" is probably overkill. I
should (soon) write about these "smart speakers", which everybody buys
but nobody really uses - feel free to call me paranoid, but I would go
bonkers if there were a technology company giving me a listening device
in my home, something they listen to 24/7 (it doesn't work if they
don't), because otherwise I can't get the weather forecast. It doesn't
help I worked on bringing speech recognition into the home, via the
telephone - if there is one thing I learned is that we're not close to
machines understanding humans. Think I am wrong? Watch the TV news with
the subtitles on, and just concentrate on every mistake you see. That's
done by speech recognizers, and the ones use by broadcasters cost
millions, and are fine-tuned to the news readers, they work much better
than Alexa and Siri. Sure. Sheesh.
Spent much of the Sunday getting the Blü to do what the Nokia did
before, I suppose this is a worthwhile exercise in terms of learning
Android. I liked the 6" Blü, but it is so large carrying it in a "hip
holster" isn't comfortable - if it is not positioned just right it falls
of your belt when you get out of the car. For the immediate stuff I
need a cellphone for, the Blackberry Z10 is still just dandy, and it is
still with its stand, the best alarm clock I've ever had.
In the interim, I was able to install most apps I normally use on
the Blü - my workout app, Endomondo, is, in its new Android iteration,
one of the more annoying bits of software, in that it tries to get you
to sign up to a "Plus" account every other keystroke or screen touch. Do
these people not understand that for every moron who signs up because
of this, there are fifty who go look for another app - not because we're
not willing to pay, but because we don't give money to people who try
to "extract-by-annoying". Not only that, the Endomondo people do not
really understand how to build a user interface for folks wishing to
work out. They have no clue that you need to find out why the person
works out, what their interests are, and then present them something
that fits their requirements. I saw that today, again, at the gym - a
new member, recording her achievements in her logbook, basically setting
the stage for self-competition. That may well be useful for an
up-and-coming athlete, but somebody in their fourties, if she maintains
this method for a decade (unlikely, as she didn't have her existing
personal logbook with her, but a brand new LA Fitness supplied one),
will find that once she is well into her fifties her performance will
deteriorate. That's normal, nothing wrong with that, but there is no
mention of that in the logbook, it is based on the same duff assumption
that people work out to improve their performance. In most cases, doing
that leads to frustration and injury - especially the latter, 98% of
doctors will tell you that interval training and spin classes are really
not good for the body, even hunter-gatherers do not use techniques that
require explosions of power, but techniques that require endurance, like the stamina
you need to follow an injured prey animal for two days, and then drag
it back to camp for another two. Somebody who does interval training is
spent after ten minutes, couldn't get it up if three nekkid women with
memorable melons piled on top of their sweaty person.
Paypal back to two factor authentication is a good idea as well -
Windows Mobile did not permit that, this Android version (I'll look up
what it is, never an Android aficionado) does - and the Blü being
encrypted, with password protection and some other stuff, is good too. I
gather you can run a terminal from it over USB - actually, why don't I
see if I can get one of the Bluetooth keyboards to work with it? Other
than that, I am going bonkers with the apps running in the background,
used or not, so I have set the background permission to "none", and
something called "Greenify" can apparently hibernate anything that isn't
in use, once the screen saver kicks in, though that does take a bit of
programming. Perhaps I will get courageous and get a terminal up
over USB, from what I see in Android "developer" mode that should be
possible. Although, I'll be much happier once I have an apartment, I
have found a lovely 60 inch square table that will work as a bench,
desk, dining table, perhaps with a glass top, though those are hardly
cheap. Thing is, I ought to get that with the table, so the surface
remains unblemished. We'll see. OTOH, you could resurface the table
later, and then get the top. Hmm. Most importantly, I need a work
surface where I can have two big screens and two laptops all parked
side-by-side, but in such a way that I can move the essentials to a side
table so I can have a dinner party. It is, essentially, the setup I had
in Virginia, where I had a laptop setup side-by-side with my trader's
workstation - mind you, the workspace in what had been intended as my
office had been taken over by a self built RAID storage server - today,
that is a smallish box, with six times the storage I had then. So that
should all be manageable, even with the extra 52 inch screen I am not
using today, parked in the garage.
I suppose I have settled down a bit, now that I have decided to stay in
Seattle - not that I had much of a choice, although I could have shot
for the moon again. I was sorely tempted, for quite a while, to try and
buy a trailer, and take off, but eventually thought that the risk of
something going wrong - my car breaking for good, running out of gas
money, the cancer returning uninvited - wasn't really worth it. Besides,
the insurance hit could have been close to unaffordable, I am not at an
age where I want to sail that close to the edge any more. Not getting
any younger was another reason to make sure I am in control, as much as I
can be, and roaring down the road to SoCal, probably ending up there
having spent much of my savings on gasoline, when I have sufficient
residence built up here to qualify for all sorts of stuff, made me think
twice.
As it stands, the car costs me about $176 per month to run - add to that
what I'd have spent on gas, from here to San Diego, probably some $350,
then finding (renting) somewhere to stay, and/or park the trailer, etc,
etc... then doing everything I've done here all over again in
California, without any infrastructure.. I had thought about buying a
used Uhaul truck up in Canada, and bringing that across the border, but
then I would have had to do a lot of work on that, though I could have
probably towed the SUV. Exciting thought, lot of work. I did - belatedly
- discover this Dodge Durango can be towed, mine has an electric
transfer case, which, apart from providing low and high gearing for four
wheel drive, can disconnect the engine from the drive train. Mind you, I
didn't discover this until last year, should have known when I came
here from Virginia - curiously, no dealerships or Uhaul places knew...
probably not that many of these things with skid plates and multigear
four wheel drive around. Ya live and learn.
If Mr. Zuckerberg really wants to solve Facebook's problems, he can
simply turn off every algorithm that attempts to identify what a user
wants to see, and what is "most relevant" to a user. That is what
consumers are used to do, and on Facebook, the "algorithms" make this
really hard. It is a bit like you like to window shop at a flowershop,
but every day the flowershop is moved to a different location, because
the owner of the building thinks he can read your mind. Those are the
facilities being exploited, and it is important for Zuck to understand
that when you arbitrarily assign "top postings", based on nothing
but programmers whose only fresh air is the walk to the car, you're
inviting every idiot on the planet to break your system. Which they've
done - between the pictures(!) of Buddha quotes, pictures of young
pussies, videos of drooling toddlers, and virtual amputation of nipples
and anything smelling of sex, you've created the most dumbed down boring
environment since CNN was added to the package at the Hilton in
Vientiane.
Watching a BBC program(me) about live streaming, it occurs to me (again)
that I never got into that, even though I had the network connections
and equipment and software way ahead of most other folk, but my use
restricted itself mostly to science and development, I guess I am simply
not an extrovert. Folks have told me in the past I have to be extrovert, what with being a journalist and a very early blogger, but both of those have little to do with vlogging and live streaming.
Kind of slipped right by me, hadn't given it much thought - in "them
days" you didn't publish for the instant recognition. These were the
days before internet - the first time I was recognized in a store in
Amsterdam came as a bit of a shock, it was not the part of fame I liked.
Eventually, I likely had hundreds of thousands of readers in Holland
and the UK, and correspondence did come in to the editorial offices, but
I now realize that wasn't why I published, and today, there isn't any
publishing without connecting with your audience. I will go so far as to
say you no longer have control over your exposure, it is all or
nothing. For someone who has had the internet at his fingertips
virtually since its inception, that's quite a discovery - you can
probably tell my configuring a remote server 8000 miles from my desk
brought back some memories. I suddenly feel more connected.
Godaddy is getting a bit expensive, they just upped their prices again,
so I figured it was time for another hoster for my website and domains. I
mean, last year the hosting package (without domains) was $95 - now,
they want $119.88 (you know they can't ask for $119.99, right?). So, I
found a hoster in Singapore, with more of everything, half the storage
(that's gonna be a problem, filling 50GB... ;), for the magnificent
price of 50 Sing$s a year - that's about US$37. And no website that
tries to sell you extra stuff every click (they have it, just don't
annoy you with it). And regular UNIX and a more than complete Cpanel -
Godaddy removed everything, like stats, that they can charge extra for,
and made it easy for tablets, which means you end up scrolling for days
to get to all of the information. So I am happy, need to learn the
interface, but that's good for yours truly.
I had almost forgotten how much I enjoy system work - sitting here
preparing to repoint the name servers at Godaddy, so they will send you
to Hostinglah. There is a reason I ended up with them, I'll tell you more about Singapore
in another blog entry. For now, I've been spending a couple of days
changing the legalese in my pages, changing redirect files, taking out
the trackers (my new account comes with those built in, as it is
supposed to be) and looking up what I need to do where. Especially
moving my email from Godaddy to Hostinglah is - well, suffice it to say
it isn't something I do a lot. So I am spending lots of time learning
their interface, taking notes, documenting what I am doing, and backing
up everything I do in different places "thrice", as my Indian friends
would say. Especially now, having a system failure that would lead to
loss of data would be a disaster, as the cutover will lose me my main
backup server - the Godaddy webserver. Making sure the links are all
checked, is another main job. I already had my first error - changing my
login scripts led to me logging into Hostinglah ftp with wrong
credentials so often, they blocked my IP address. Took me days to figure
out why I could not access my new server space.... and ten minutes to
get them to unblock the block.
It was a good moment to clean up all of my web code, remove the trackers
(which, believe it or not, invite miscreants), make sure the links
work, and check the transfer facilities at Godaddy. I can now switch to
secure webtechnology (https:) too, but have to (quickly) figure out how
that works. Much to my (pleased) surprise, my Singapore hosting account
comes with the security certificates already installed - Godaddy (I
recently checked on this, due to ongoing hacking attempts) wanted me to
pay extra and do a whole bunch of complicated stuff to install a
certificate. Here (that's the way it looks) I can just "pull the
trigger" and it is done. Let you know tomorrow. From a security
perspective, I am better off - I've been able to turn off remote
linking, and the Javascript trackers I used I have been able to remove
completely, as Hostinglah has tracking built in. There are hacker
outfits that use your trackers to generate hits for their billing code, I
have now seen that on two different tracking sites, and without
trackers that is no longer possible.
I looked into it because my Wordpress installation at the Godaddy server
was hacked, the second time over the years that my Wordpress was hacked
- and this time, a Wordpress that I don't even use, I got wise to its
vulnerability the first time I lost my site. In Singapore, I can install
it, but it isn't provisioned automatically. Kewl.
So - the bad news about the Faleemi IP camera is that it communicates on
its own with whoever in China, and even finds ways around a firewall.
That's significant. I am gobsmacked that when you firewall off the
camera, on a router without direct internet exposure, and you move that
router to a DMZ on another router, the software in the camera is smart
enough to recognize this, change the network setting to DHCP by itself,
and connect with its lords and masters in China. That is way beyond
"helpful", as the interface does not notify you it is changing your
settings, or why. I swear - I only noticed because its red LED, which
starts flashing when it can't talk to its mummy in Shenzen, stopped
flashing. Then I thought I'd gone crazy, then I realized that, since I
didn't make the change (most things in my network have static IPs), its
built in logic must have. Gotta tell you, we don't really need to worry
about data security, because the FCC does not check these devices, and
they are cheap enough there must be hundreds of thousands telling their
makers every little detail about our networks. I recall buying a router
in Beijing, and finding it had firmware using a Mandarin interface whose
version wasn't even listed by the manufacturer. Worried about Huawei?
Let me put it this way, legislators, if you'd like to know what to worry
about, get some budget and I'll take you around Beijing and Hong Kong,
and show you what really should scare you, and it ain't a large Chinese
multinational.
Apart from the problems with network security, though, the price and
level of sophistication of IP cameras is such that you can comfortably
replace your security system with a PC or laptop, some free software,
and one or two IP cameras. Both the cameras and the software can
instantly, when motion is detected, send a message and pictures or video
to another computer or a smartphone, and you can set it up to sound
sirens or call the local sheriff. Yes, you'll need to spend time
learning how to set up the (free) software, though you can buy software
with support, if you want to. The way I've set mine up a cheap remote
controlled IP camera is paired to a cheap laptop connected to the
internet, and I will, for good measure, test this setup with a tethered
Bluetooth connection to a smartphone, so that even when the power fails,
the system will still work - you can actually power a camera from a USB
port. Again, the way I have set it up, captured images and video go to
my webserver instantly, as well as via email to my mobile phone, so even
if a burglar takes or destroys the equipment, you've been alerted and
their image is available to law enforcement. All this for less money
than a remote calling burglar alarm system used to cost. Yes, consumers
didn't use to be able to set up these computer based systems, but today,
if you don't have these skills, you're probably unemployed, in which
case you won't have much to steal anyway.
No, this picture has nothing to do with anything below, just spent some
time cooking for the freezer, the other day, looking forward to the day
I will have my own kitchen again. Reminds me part of the reason I
bought the Virginia house was the enormous eat-in kitchen, not that I
expect a Seattle apartment to have anything remotely like that,
apartments get built for "efficiency", meaning that if you can turn
around in an apartment kitchen you're lucky. In Manhattan, kitchenettes
were tiny, and as it was practically impossible to cook without smelling
the entire studio up for three days, you didn't.
I couldn't figure out why my Zyxel NAS drive had slowing access, and
showed 100% CPU usage - the two might or might not be related - until I
spent a good couple of hours rummaging around the internet. The amount
of information, and the way it is indexed, is now such that a search for
even a simple query returns 1000's of results, and the hackers have
gotten so clever in manipulating search engines that half the results
have no relationship to the query. As it happens a few results were
referring to syslog under linux, and it was a syslog under python that
caused the problem, but for a novice that would be hard to resolve. At
least, if I have a combined parameter query, the search engine should
return the first few pages of answers with both parameters included. It
is a hotchpotch - got there, but it took several days. I guess I am
lucky I (probably) lost no data, over the week or so this problem
lasted. Box could have crashed - and why the logging process opened
directories but never wrote logs.. I am planning to buy a larger version
of this Zyxel, so it is important to have the OS under control. All I
need now is money to buy four 3 terabyte disk - populating a new NAS
with fewer than the maximum number of drives, then add more later, if
you've never done that before, is not a smart idea. So, if you think
about getting a network drive with all the bells and whistles, remember
the drive, by and large, has no way to send error messages to your PC.
So if you don't regularly log in and look at the status messages, you're
dependent on functionality to assess how it is doing. While most NAS
drives have the ability to send status messages to email, that requires a
mail account with POP and SMTP settings, and although you can use a
Gmail account for this, that may not be everybody's cup of tea.
Especially since NAS drives are set up for things you may never use,
like ITunes and Cloud Provisioning and Twonky and the like, it looks to
me those can use copious processor capacity on your drive.
Anyway, for those that followed my antics, the cutover from Godaddy
hosting to the Hostinglah hoster in Singapore was spectacularly
uneventful - on a Sunday morning, the nameserver repointing took less
than 60 seconds. And I've added another domain in the meantime, and
moved the mail engines to Singapore, had all that done and working a
couple of hours after I came back from the gym, on Sunday. I seem to
recall that last time I moved domains it took me more than a day to get
everything working right, but the Cpanel Hostinglah uses is the easiest
and nicest I've ever had me grubbies on. In hindsight, Godaddy makes its
interface much more complicated than it needs to be, or so it seems to
me, but I probably am not the best judge, I don't know how other folk
experience their menu system. Regardless, I am happy, I believe
(untested) Hostinglah is faster, and their deal comes with everything I
could possibly need, security certificates, unlimited mailboxes, and a
massive 50GB of storage. Their security features, on the server, are
such I may use that to store sensitive stuff on, something I did not
normally do on Godaddy (unless I was overseas and had to).
If you're wondering why I mention server space, a webserver is little
more than a PC equivalent (not necessarily a physical machine, but it
can be a process) you access via web server software, like the
ubiquitous Apache. So if you don't like the Cloud, like I don't,
internet connected server space is a good alternative. You just need to
be able to manage it, which, with Cloud space, is largely done for you.
The thing that bothers me is that most providers of "free" Cloud space,
like Microsoft, Google, and all those others - a Windows PC comes with
Microsoft Cloud, an Android phone comes with Google Cloud - stipulate in
their Terms & Conditions they can "parse" (read: read) all of the
information you store on their systems, and can use it for marketing
purposes. Think about it - you take pictures using your Android
smartphone, and later, you open them in Google Photo. Guess what you
just did? You copied your personal, private pictures from your personal,
private smartphone, to Google's Cloud (assuming you've registered your
phone with your Gmail address). I am just not comfortable having these
people and algorithms go through my correspondence and analyze my
pictures, feel free to call me a privacy nut, and the other problem is
that I have been computerized and internetworked for so long that
storing my data - approaching 10 terabytes - in the Cloud would be
expensive, some $30 per month. So I have my network drives - and will
soon, after I move, have to add a new 12 terabyte NAS drive to make sure
I am "future proof". That will yield me some 9 secure terabytes, I can
move the data from both current NAS drives, and clean those up and make
important data fully redundant with them. Which is where the extra 50GB
in the web server comes in.
Speaking of security, I am going to set up at least one laptop so it is
fully encrypted, using Microsoft's Bitlocker. Windows lets you do that,
booting from a thumb drive with the encryption key, and I am curious to
see how well that works. I have a couple of thumb drives on order that
will be dedicated to the encrypted laptop - my other laptops have
security chips built in, and so do no need an "external device" to
facilitate that type of encryption. My web server, too, now has
encryption enabled, you know, the stuff that lets you run "https:"
webpages. I am still playing with it, having discovered that when you
secure your webpages, the non-secure pictures won't load, interesting,
had not thought of that.
What else? I seem to quickly get most of my chores behind me, though, as
usual, I keep postponing changing my oil, which isn't a big job, but
I'd really like not to lie around underneath the car in the rain. And
there have been very few sunny frost free days since the beginning of
November. Umm, taxes all done, that's the earliest ever, but I was
helped by the fact that I had been working on next year's budget for my
Housing Association application since September, so by the time late
December rolled around my database was all complete and corrected - that
is usually what takes the time. The Social Security annual paperwork
arrived early, last week, and that really was all I needed to pull the
trigger. Yesterday, to my amazement, my return was complete, and my
online tax provider accepted it for transmission. I don't know when the
IRS starts taking them in, I think not until the 29th, so we'll see, I
was surprised they let me transmit. Usually, there are last minute
changes to the tax code, but apparently not this year. Nice to have that
out of my hair.
I
don't know if you ever think about cancer - I do, almost daily. This is
not, BTW, meant to be a sob story - my then GP, Dr. Zweig, in
Arlington, VA, discovered a lump during my annual checkup, sent me for a
biopsy, and the rest is history, I am doing fine, eight years on. In
Washington, D.C., of which Arlington is a suburb, they don't horse
around, positive test, next thing you know you're in hospital having
bits removed, and then radiation treatment (in pill form). In The District,
you never know who your patient is, or who they might be tomorrow -
imagine, you're treating a realtor, next thing he's Da Prez. That's
possible anywhere, but in D.C. you're just much more cognizant of it
than anywhere else - you get sued, your next practice is in North
Dakota. There is not, of course, anything wrong with North Dakota, but
D.C. isn't a stop on that rail line.
Anyway, I just thought I'd mention that no, there isn't a cure
for cancer. Not on the Interweb, not in seeds from trees in Morocco that
have been passed through goats, and especially not in the advice of
aunt Rachel's herbal practitioner. Once you have cancer, you can get
successful treatment, and you may eventually be told you're "in
remission". Why? Because there isn't a cure, once your immune
system misfires, you know yours is capable of doing that, and it can do
it again. So no doctor will tell you you're cured, because they can't
promise that. They're not preachers, they're engineers. Every time I
hear people say they have "beaten cancer" or "been declared healthy" I
cringe. It isn't a good way to educate the public. It is no big deal,
cancers that get caught early can be treated, and some of us get very
old, but it is never "gone". I am on medication for the rest of my life,
and was checked up on every quarter, for over five years after the
surgery - partly, of course, because I already had an immune condition.
And these days, my endocrinologist being happy with things, I get
checked every six months, get a yearly scan, and watch myself very
carefully. This is one reason why I continue to live in the United
States - my Medicare was paid up when I retired. It can be
discombobulating - you never know, a sniffle, a painful knee, dark
stool, if the cancer is back. And the same next sniffle. You live with
it - not much of a choice, really. I just want you to never forgo
that doctor visit, even if you think you cannot afford it - go to an
emergency room, if you need to, they are required (here in the USA) to
have a doctor see you. If it turns out you don't have cancer (or
tuberculosis), you are not a hypochondriac, you're one of the lucky.
This is why we have three times more doctors than we need, in urban
America. And if you want to be helpful, please don't post these stupid
"remember cancer" messages on Facebook. If you really want to be useful,
find a nearby cancer patient, offer to drive them to the hospital next
time they have a checkup, wait for them, and buy them lunch
afterwards. Then call a week later, to hear what their results were. Try
it. You'll like it. Think about it this way: ten years from now you may
have tubes and wires and beeps coming out of you. The present is for
learning.
ASUS Blu-ray
I've
had a few issues with USB 3.0, so have been cautious in its use - one
external drive I have times out during backup, and it is really hard to
figure out if it is the drive enclosure, the drive itself, the USB 3.0
port, or the Windows version that runs on the laptop, which was designed
for two Windows versions ago. Anyway, the other day I was looking at Blu-ray drives
- I have a Buffalo drive, meant to be compatible with both Blu-ray and
HD-DVD, which connects with USB 2.0. It works well, but I always get
nervous when I do not have a backup of a peripheral. After some
searches, I came across an ASUS drive with USB 3.0, meant for BD,
Blu-ray Data, but as I have existing Blu-ray movie software that should
all work together. ASUS offers a $20 rebate on the box, and that made
it a steal at $60.
I doubt you'll notice this much, but my website is running much more
smoothly on the Singapore server - let me put it this way, if you don't
notice anything, I done good. I get the impression access is faster than
with Godaddy, not blisteringly so, but I can see the difference. On top
of that, I've been able to turn on encryption and remove most of the
bits of Javascript I had in there, and that is just so smooth. No more hack attacks
- so far - and nobody stealing clicks from my trackers, something folks
now do, that costs bandwidth and response time, something I had been
battling for over a year. I am really pleased - and network security,
with these folks, is excellent, too many spurious accesses from an IP
address and they block it, and I can block folks I don't like myself.
A lot of stuff goes on that does not appear to warrant our attention.
Trump? He's got everybody running around like headless chickens, and
when I see he says he'll give some 800,000 illegals citizenship
for as long as he gets his wall, I seem to think that isn't how he
started this whole thing. I didn't know it was that easy - I doubt the
DACA recipients and the wall will have gotten anywhere near going by the
end of his term. There is so little going on, I barely watch my daily
TV news diet - of course, by the time news makes it to the anchor desks,
it is hours old, and has been pushed to the point that probably 70% of
all "news" is reporters trying to predict the future, the rest is kids
shooting up their schools. I find the most interesting phenomenon the
electric car, self driving or otherwise. There isn't a real
infrastructure for them as yet, batteries do not have the energy
delivery that lets you heat and cool a car, and you drive into the
mountains on a half empty set of batteries, charge the car while you
ski, then drive home. Same with self driving cars - the road layout and
signage have to conform to standards, or the thing won't know where it
is, or what to do. It loses GPS, which happens, you're stuck. Perhaps
this stuff will eventually "get there", but we're not even a little bit
close. Much of it is putting square pegs in round holes - regurgitating
electric power from a car back into the grid - why? If you didn't need
it in the car, why'd you charge the thing in the first place? And if you
have just given half your power back to the community, and Grandma has
an emergency two towns over, how are you going to get back home from the
hospital? Plug it into a defibrillator? Dunno, kids.
I mentioned earlier I had encrypted
a "spare" laptop using Microsoft's Bitlocker, this being an older
Toshiba laptop that has UEFI boot, but no TPM - the security chip that
my HP's have, which allows an effectively impenetrable encryption right
on the motherboard. I have finished that now, with a secure boot using a
USB 3.0 flash drive,
as you can see here. It is an experiment in that I will eventually use
this laptop for surveillance, where both an IP camera and its built in
webcam will do its part, and the encryption ensures that no data on that
system can be retrieved. Ultimately, I want the internet connection to
come from a 4G LTE phone, so that any captured video and images can be
offloaded on a remote server, while the local Ethernet has no Internet,
or perhaps backup Internet. I have to say this anemic Toshiba, with 8GB
of RAM, an SSD, and Windows 10 Pro, is faster than I thought possible.
As it turns out, the secure USB stick can be duplicated, so I
don't even have to worry about not being able to boot when the stick
fails. They're not the most reliable memory devices, and these, at $6,
are decidedly in the cheapo quarter. I am not planning to have sensitive
data on the laptop, but wanted to know how easy or difficult it is to
do full encryption on a boot disk. I don't want to experiment on laptops
with "real" data, and lots of it. Works fine, it is smooth, I've had an
external storage drive running under Bitlocker for a couple of years
now, and can't say I've ever had a problem with it. How Bitlocker works
on an SSD time will tell, but the process (Windows 10 uses a new version
of Bitlocker, not backwards compatible) is - so far - painless. I have
had misgivings about SSD's, as the first one I bought, a Crucial drive,
failed within weeks - I was able to return it under warranty, but
haven't touched one since, until I bought a used HP Elitebook last year,
that came with one. And that drive, a 160GB Intel SSD, I tested the bejesus out of, then to relegate it to "backup use", where it passed with flying colors..
Checking my website stats right on the server, which I can now do again,
the first thing I see is some 200 Wordpress/php hack attempts, in just a
few days. They probably see the new face on the server, but as I am not
running Wordpress, every attempt fails. And I see attempts at hitting
Apple code, I don't even know what that is about. I do know it isn't
installed on my server... This is kinda cool, especially since I have
root access, but have not put any of my publicly accesible files there.
My surveillance videos, which I used to park in the webroot, now live in
the root, where the wankers can't get. I hope. I was going to turn php
on, but maybe I need to think about that. Just for the blog, I don't
need it. Day in day out someone runs and automated script to set up a
Wordpress login in my domain, just on the offchance it is installed but
not enabled. I had this last year on Godaddy, which alerted me someone
had installed PHP virus code on my server instance. I tell you,
/cgi/bin/ and .php are vulnerable like nothing on the planet. I
encountered this before, Freeservers lost me my entire website to a
hack, domain hijack, and their support crew in India then said they'd
restore it from a backup, I am still waiting, ten years later.
Much more better. Because I have now mirrored the directory structure of
my webserver onto my local disk, it is much easier to make sure it all
fits and works together. HTML will show and display things on the hard
disk, in a browser, just as easily as on a remote web server 8,071 miles
away. I am not quite sure why I did not do this earlier - ah, oh, I
think I do remember. A couple of years ago I discovered you can run an
ftp-command in a Windows Explorer instance, even set up a shortcut
for it that will log in as an ftp user. That means the remote
ftp-server comes up just the same way a local hard disk does, and you
can drag and drop, delete, duplicate, do the same stuff you do on your
local desktop. I had just never translated that to being able to fully
duplicate - recorsively - entire directory structures, and on this HP
laptop, I have plenty of disk space to play with, so the entire website -
about half a gigabyte - fits easily. I just had not put two and three
together, partly because I had not moved my website since before I left
Virginia, when I was still (privately, paid for by self) using the
hoster that had my Verizon work-websites (which included all of the
Verizon Business organization. This works well, for as long as you have a
fiber pipe and copious disk space available. It isn't just the
workspace, you need the backup facilities as well, but that now is a 6
terabyte NAS drive, soon to be replaced with a 12 terabyte (9TB
effective under RAID5+1) new network drive.
Before that, I used Filezilla - an excellent piece of software, capable
of recursing, but one little mistake and you screw up your server, and
it has a tendency to repeat login failures so you get locked out. Which
happened last week. So this is good, and on a fast laptop, over fiber,
with Windows 10 Pro, I am doing well. Accessing my web structure locally
(which I could have done using one of the NAS drives) with the new
recursed directory paths also means I am not causing hits on my own
website, so my "new" stats will be much more meaningful. This is not
bad. Never mind I've been doing this web stuff for over 20 years, I
still learn. Nice.
Ah, there we are! I mentioned last week I had hack attempts looking for
Apple code - of course: the Time Machine! So hackers find Wordpress easy
to get into, but Apple's Time Machine as well - if it wasn't hackable
they would not try. Wow. Every time I look, I see that Cloud servers are
not secure, there are hordes of smart miscreants trying to break them.
And we know they do. So if you must "Cloud", develop something to store
stuff they won't figure out. Not your average off-the-shelf solution. If
you must. Honest. I cut over my domain last weekend, I have been
turning it up and repointing all week, step-by-step, and the hackers
have been trying to break this new server space from about an hour after
Steve in Singapore turned it on. It is horrendous. Remember, the
internet is a public place - anything that gets a public IP address -
which you must have or nobody can get to your webiste - can be seen and
scanned, and these folks have their automated tools running on
every server park on the planet, 24/7. Nothing anybody can do. I even
see this on my own NAS drives - I have now firewalled them, as I don't
need them to be seen from outside, except when I check for firmware
updates, and I noticed my ZyXel no longer ramps up, by itself, as
midnight. Why and how it talked, every night, and who to, I'll never
know, for all I know it was just doing routine maintenance, but firewall
the port, and it stops.
Slightly frustrating that you probably cannot really see it, but I
have cleaned up my webcode to the point that the load is fast and
smooth - if you're in the United States or Europe, it'll be
hard-to-impossible to discern it is now hosted in Asia Pacific,
rather than Arizona. Web service has been clean and stable for a week,
everything works when tested on the server IP they gave me, so after
pointing all of my domains at the Singapore server, last night, with
appropriate trepidation, I shut down the Godaddy hosting package, after
cleaning up my files. The hosting is not far, incongruously, from where
half of my family lived, and my parents married, back before World War II. 
It was back in 1995 that I myself first set foot there, taking up a
development posting, and that I realized these folks were flying hourly
Jumbo jet shuttles between Jakarta and Singapore, each aircraft
packed, busy enough that SIA ran 747-400s, with some 400 seats. Up until
then, I thought the hourly shuttles between Boston, NYC and Washington,
D.C., twin engined 320s and 757s, with some 120 seats and a
complimentary bagel, were special. Anyway, while I can understand
Godaddy's prices going up, over time (2012) their hosting package lost
features and increased in price, and as this is just a blog, not a
commercial enterprise, that did not seem worth it. I looked at other
hosters last year, but none of them seemed to provide as complete a
package as Hostinglah in Singapore does. I actually have enough disk
space to let me back up to it, I should look into that.
Backing Up
The AIS Backup
commercial application I have been using for years to back up to
external disks and network drives, can additionally write a backup
archive to an FTP port, the advantage being that it creates ZIP
archives, with password protection and encryption. A ZIP file can be
unpacked using any number of archival utilities, the "unpack" is even
built into Windows and other operating systems, and that means you
don't, in a pinch, need to use AISBackup to restore files (though with AIS, it'd be a heck of a lot faster..). Because file access and setting up FTP is so much easier
at my new Singapore hoster, I decided to give that a try. Ever
cognizant of hacking dangers, storing backups on web servers was never a
good idea, I thought, if it is on the web you might as well put an
unlocked filing cabinet on the sidewalk, but with the AES encryption AIS
backup allows, part of the ZIP protocol, I should be able to put
reasonably secure backups on the hosting server, especially since I can
put them in the root of the server, which ordinary web appplications
can't access. I did not have this facility before - it exists on a UNIX
or Linux server running Apache webserver software, but not on
most "normal" webservers I've used, over the years. I ran a test,
yesterday, and am still tweaking, but was able to back up 1.2 GB of data
to the FTP server in 33 minutes using hardwired internet, and 900 MB of
data in an hour using 4G LTE (mobile) data - not bad (we don't normally
think about this any more, but a 900 MB backup actually uses over 2 GB
of data, since the verification doubles the volume). In both cases, this
involved password encrypted ZIP archives, which after backing up are
downloaded back from the remote server for integrity verification. I
need to check with the sysadmins whether there are any restrictions, but
generally, this should enable complete real time backups, along the
lines of Apple's Time Machine or Windows File History. I could even add
backup encryption, which would require AIS itself to retrieve and
unpack the files - double protection, if you like, without being able
to manually unzip archives. I don't know if I want to make myself that
dependent on one piece of software - literally every time I buy another
drive, it comes with a propietary piece of backup software - Seagate
had something that I can no longer find the license key for, Western
Digital has something else, so does Buffalo, Cyberlink has a proprietary
piece of something that you need Cyberlink to restore for, and so on
and so forth.
You've
seen the ads for alarm systems - a reseller of ADT security is running
TV ads with a retired Dallas Cowboys quarterback.. In general, if a
vendor needs to attract your attention with a person who has absolutely
no relationship to security, look twice. If they run expensive broadcast
ads in prime time, you would be paying for those. Security is
important, but remember the first line of defence is you. Lock up, lock
up, and don't rely on phone or internet connected security - a phone
line, cable connection or internet fiber is cut in seconds, when I see
those burglars on candid camera, there clearly are lots of stupid
criminals around, and they clearly don't mind going to jail for a bit.
Those IP cameras are good, and important is that you have one outside, and that it talks to the Cloud, or an external server
(I use my web server in Asia), so you have pictures or video of them
and their car before they cut your internet or power. There is most
times a car - you can't steal TVs and other big stuff if you don't have a
vehicle to haul the haul. BTW, if your camera pans and tilts using
motion sensing - don't use that, the mechanisms are not designed for
24/7 operation, or buy two, so you can replace it the day it breaks,
with the same settings and software - tomorrow, what you buy today on
Amazon may not be available any more, and you have to buy something
different and spend two days integrating that into your existing setup,
and test it. Better get a second camera, they're under $40 now, and like
I said, don't worry about getting the picture to your smartphone, make
sure it goes to a storage facility outside your home or office, where
the burglars can't take it. Remember, too, the on-cam-burglaries you see
on TV are those where the technology worked - the news does not show
you the numerous instances where it didn't, because that isn't exciting
to watch... I will keep you posted as to my experience with the camera
above, but that isn't an outdoor model, and as you can see in my Amazon
review, it compromises your home internet security. You can prevent it,
but that requires router firewall knowledge.
Ouch. That is the second time an HGST (Hitachi morphed into Western
Digital) laptop drive failed on me - if, to be honest, that is what it
was. I periodically clean my laptops' innards, and swap the batteries,
and today that meant one of my HP Elitebooks wouldn't come back up. It
hit a Windows start screen, which then informed me my configuration was
invalid, which it wasn't, so that had to be the boot partition.
Booting from a Windows 10 latest-update repair DVD didn't help, that
said there wasn't an operating system on the hard disk. And that is
where my overabundant backup routine waltzed in. I grabbed a replacement
hard disk (another 1TB HGST disk, but I have now ordered a Seagate 2TB Firecuda hybrid SSHD,
which will go in as soon as it gets here, thank God for spares though),
restored a 6 day old Windows 10 image from backup, which worked
flawlessly, booted that, and then restored this morning's full AIS
Backup over the Windows restore, which brought me back to about 10am, in
terms of files. Then, I managed to access the "broken" drive, which had
its file systems intact, on another laptop, pulled the directories that
I knew might have files changed between 10am and 2pm, when the failure
happened, and put those on a network drive. Next, I used robocopy to
move only today's changed files (a differential restore) from the
network drive to the boot drive, and, after four hours of methodical
restoration, I was back where I had been when the boot failure happened.
So cool. I will scrub the suspect HGST drive, and run a deep scan on
it, but I'll never use those in my laptops any more. I had one fail and
damage data in my old Lenovo before, put that down to accident, and
although I don't know for sure this drive actually failed, I was able to
bring the laptop back easily, so it wasn't the BIOS or the motherboard
that caused the failure (this laptop occasionally crashes when I have
too many USB ports active, when it runs out of interrupts).
I had been lusting after the Firecuda
(8GB of silicon paired to 2TB of conventional disk) anyway, decided not
to buy one as I didn't really need it (had I known.. they were $40 off
in December), and this seems a good moment to install that and switch to
Bitlocker encryption - this laptop has a TPM security chip,
something I have not used before, but as I am installing a completely
new disk, and will have the old disk with a full image, better now than
never. What Bitlocker will cost me in speed should be more than made up
by the SSD portion of the drive, which will act as a big fast buffer
between the mechanical drive and the system (it isn't a cache). The two
HGST's, provided the drive that failed today passes a reformat, can
function as backup drives. I had two, both with a 1 terabyte capacity,
because I try to keep a duplicate of the active disk; if you back up to a
smaller device, you save money, but you can't easily replace a failed disk.
QED, one might say. My other laptop has a 2TB disk, about half full,
and that has a 2TB duplicate as well. I have restored and rescued failed
hard disks before, but this time was absolutely the easiest and fastest
restore ever. One thing you have to absolutely take into account: make
sure the Windows Repair DVD was created on the system you need to
restore, on the DVD writer you may need to run the restore from. Windows
checks the system configuration against the image you are going to
restore, and today, if you even changed your memory, it may fail, all
part and parcel of Microsoft's effort to stop people from duplicating
license keys. I've had that happen before, but this time, forewarned was
forearmed, it worked swimmingly.
For those who read my piece on skin problems, arthritis and psoriasis,
below - there is a shampoo on supermarket shelves marketed for dandruff
control, whose main ingredient is a coal tar solution. It lists
psoriasis on its label, as well, you haven't lived until you Googled. I
had never heard of coal tar treatment, but decided to try and see
if some gentle use of it might alleviate my itchiness - actually, one
doctor has called it eczema, and given me precription steroid cream,
which did not really do much, but then I have been on long term oral corticosteroids,
and I really am not fond of them, they gave me (at the time there was
no alternative) osteoporosis. My other doctor thinks it is psoriatic
arthritis, and having been diagnosed earlier with a form of psoriasis,
and having had a father who suffered from that, I've gone with that. So:
gentle use - as in, I use it as a body wash once a week, without
slathering it on, or leaving it on the skin for long. As I use baby
stuff more or less all the time, the coal tar shampoo, if nothing else,
degreases my skin and hair, as I said, once a week. And after months of
use in this way, I am significantly less itchy - although I have no way
of knowing if that is the hypo-allergenic body wash, the coal tar
shampoo, or both. I know the latter can have a detrimental effect on the
skin, but then true psoriasis sufferers, which I am not, are probably
glad of anything that "helps". Anyway, just wanted to complete my skin
story, I do believe that, used in this fashion, it has a positive
effect. Neutrogena sells it as T-Gel, Wincofoods has its own label, less
(I saw the T-Gel for something like $8 for 6oz., Winco's own brand does
$3.74 for 16oz.) - I see from English publications that topical coal
tar solutions are getting horrendously expensive over there. The shampoo
is actually classed as a drug, an over-the-counter medication (and
again: I don't use this just as a shampoo, but as a body wash as well,
just once a week). This link
goes to the US gummint's National Institutes of Health. Writing this, I
realize that over the past six months or so, my eczema has actually all
but disappeared, although I have no way of knowing which "treatment"
did the trick, or if it is a combination.
One thing I do know, from my trusty doctor, the chlorine
in tap water is not a good thing for sensitive skin, so not removing
the oils from your skin too often may help prevent the chlorine getting
at you. And no, she is from the Punjab, so did not grow up with chlorine
and fluoride in her water. An important thing to remember if you have
medical issues - when trying a new or different remedy, go easy and take
your time. If you've had a complaint for some time, it is not likely to
go away overnight, and a high dosage of something may have adverse
effects, even if it helps. Start low, then be patient. Assuming my skin
is, today, feeling better due to the once-a-week application of coal tar
(in higher dosages, a known carcinogen), I've achieved what I wanted to
achieve, over, I think, a six or seven month period. Understand, too,
that skin renews itself, and as you get older, like other organs, it
doesn't renew as fast or as virulent as when you are a baby (that babies
have sensitive skin is a myth - a baby's skin probably renews every
month or so, as they grow - yours definitely does not), so you have to
take better care of it - and no, you can't moisturize skin, you can only
try to prevent it losing moisture, and stop yourself from
removing all oils from it, they are there for a reason, and it isn't to
make the Avon lady rich. Think about it logically: you degrease your
skin, in the morning, and then put chemicals on it? Why, exactly?
Hmm. Made some changes to SichboPVR, the app I found that will let me
put broadcast TV on a PC or laptop, using a dongle - while I used ATSC, I
understand it'll handle the European/Asian DVB-T format as well,
something I can't test as we don't have those broadcasts here, even if I
own a dongle. So now it starts up when I boot, and immediately grabs a
broadcast signal - it sometimes did not do that before. I don't really
want it to run on boot, so I've got to figure out what else I changed.
The dongle is here, the app here....
and no, I don't currently have a functional TV set, I use my flat
panels as computer monitors only. It made little sense to connect a TV
antenna to TV sets, when these cheap dongles let me watch TV in a
window, when I want, or record whatever piques my interest for later
viewing, streamed from a NAS drive. Apart from some news, I rarely watch
"live" TV - once you move to the West Coast, you discover lots of stuff
is programmed for the East Coast, and then rebroadcast with three hours
tape delay. I am glad I don't have to watch TV with a smartphone in my
lap, I just have TV going in a window on my other screen, either local
news or BBC IPTV.
Well, he did it
- I had (and have) a hard time with the 27 engines of the Falcon Heavy -
unless the vehicle is truly intelligent, a small mishap could really
take this thing to pieces. Having said that, if it achieved its intended
flight path, and with the knowledge at least two boosters safely made
it back down, Elon Musk has made a miracle. The Tesla in orbit? I don't
know, perhaps Musk is of a new, playful generation, that is how we used
to make advances, so the jury is out on that. With the reusable
boosters, I hope he'll give the Russians a run for their money. With
three times the payload of the Ariane 5ES, I'll bet a few headaches have
started.
Looking at the tracker at my new hosting provider, I am amazed at the avalanche
of hack attempts. I've seen some of that before, but bots from all over
(likely spoofed IPs or hijacked PCs) trying to hit logins for software I
don't even have installed, every couple of minutes, is pretty amazing.
The screen capture to the left shows you some of that traffic - if it is
hard to see, click on the image and it'll enlarge into a separate tab
or window. And no, they're not trying to get my data, they're trying to
inject code that can infect visitors - curious, as you can see, they're
trying to break into my Wordpress install, every couple of minutes -
curious, because I do not have a Wordpress install. I have
nothing running they can do that with, and I won't, either, having seen
this. It is a 24/7 occupation, and it is not in any way getting
resolved, tell you that much for free. Read my IP camera review
at Amazon, and you'll understand this gets worse, and the IoT is to
blame. Life was hard enough when people were trying to hack your email,
but your refrigerator? Why do you have a smart thermostat, so you can
turn up the heat from your hotel in Lagos - have you ever had a
hankering to do that? You are probably not going to bother firewalling
off your smart refrigerator - at least not until you find out they have
been using that to access the camera on your daughter's smartphone,
including that steamy chat she had with her boyfriend, and posting the
results all over Instagram.
Hah! The cold again... snow, freeze, we were kinda hoping winter was
over, but no, it bounced right back. Not a biggie, it happens, I still
managed the walk to the gym and back, thankfully clear skies and cold
wind also mean sunshine.
While rivers of scientific articles are available on the main news
outlets, many of those are reports by science writers about largely
meaningless research papers - meaningless, because testing 17 people
over 2 weeks does not provide statistically meaningful results.
These papers are, more often than not, written by scientists needing to
produce sufficient numbers of published papers to receive more funding.
That is, for them, a valid exploit, but it is a step on their ladder,
not a publishable or meaningful result. This New York Times article
relates research where a "brain implant" can stimulate parts of the
brain to improve memory capability, with the conclusion that this would
help treat dementia. This goes from the assumption that memory lapses
are a symptom of dementia, for which there is no scientific evidence,
it could just as easily be the other way around. Dementia is one of
those catch-all conditions that don't have a clearly defined
cause-and-effect diagnosis, there isn't a "dementia blood test". And,
there is currently no treatment that can cure or improve dementia, and
that means there is no way to do a comparative study. Maybe a 60+
year old woman can now "remember more than a hundred words in the
correct order", but I can't say that that is in any way meaningful to
me. Go ahead and get a 12 year old to remember "more than a
hundred words in the correct order" - if that is the criterium, the 12
year old surely has dementia too. The concept that being able to
remember more than a hundred words in the correct order has scientific
meaning and medical value is unproven and artificial.
Back when I started my IT career with IBM, I was able to learn 42 digit
numbers by heart. Why? Apart from obviously having that ability, which
not everybody does, there was a need to use 42 digit codes in our
customer support system, and after a while, I found I didn't need to
look them up any more. What's lost in that narrative is that you have to
have a need for that memory - it isn't a game or research, it was a
useful skill in my job. I did not set out to memorise long numbers, I
just noticed I had that skill, at some point. The minute I stopped
working with that system, I never did it any more, and while I train
myself today to remember "illogical" logins and long passwords (the
longest password I currently use is a 13 digit alpha-numeric jumble, one
of about a dozen different passwords I use concurrently), I certainly
couldn't "remember" the way I in my twenties. And you can do this too -
if you use different logins and passwords for all of your online
accounts, get rid of all the password remembering apps, you'll find that
after three to six months you will cleanly remember them all, nobody
can steal 'em because they're not stored anywhere, and for your brain,
this is real excercise, like weight lifting is for muscles.
What I am saying is that I believe brain training, and memory
training, have to be done with subjects - like bank account numbers,
logins, passwords, addresses - that you need, that the brain classes as
"essential" - under breathing, but above sex. I do not believe that
Bingo, as a memory exercise, improves brain function in the elderly. And
we need to ask ourselves if "improving brain function" is even
necessary - it may well be that, as one gets older, memory portions of
the brain fill up, and other brain areas are used to store more memory,
and that just doesn't work as well, or works differently. These days, if
your research goes off the beaten path, you'll find funding and
approvals are harder to come by, and you do want that Ph.D.
I have a friend who uses a word game to keep his mind sharp - guess
what, that does not work, repeating things you have used all your life
does absolutely nothing for your brain. Learning new things is
exercise, and doing that again and again is too. I invited my friend to
join me in learning to fly a drone, something neither I nor he have ever
done before - he declined, stating he was concerned he might damage it.
Guess what - so am I, but you have to teach yourself new tricks,
the mind is a bioactive organ that builds new cells and synapses every
day. If nothing else, if you use your memory the way I just described
every day, deliberately, you will have early warning when your memory
begins to fail.
Anyway, back to that hard disk.. Normally, I scrub a new or re-purposed
hard disk by doing a full write/erase. That not only hits every single
sector,but cleans up any sectors that might be marginal, drives move
data off those, automatically, to known good sectors. Obviously, with an
SSD, which has no physical sectors, this is not necessary, depending on
the tooll it may even be harmful, but I really don't know what to do
with a hybrid drive, like the Seagate SSHD I just installed. So I've
done nothing, while I do research and maybe ask Seagate for advice - it
is, of course, a new drive, so I doubt it will let itself get damaged by
older tools. I've used Seagates' Acronis cloning software, which I
assume is aware of the architecture, and took maybe half an hour too
clone the terabyte HGST to the 2 terabyte Seagate. It went into the HP
without problems, although the first boot took a very long time,
presumably Windows adjusting to the different drive architecture.
Interestingly, the HP BIOS thought it still had the old drive, until I
did a BIOS parameter rewrite and reboot. But then it blew (again?). It
being new-out-of-the-box, it wasn't likely there was a malfunction, and I
do not know, of course, how it is architected, remembering I had
trouble getting the Intel SSD that was in the HP working properly in
another laptop.
I am still battling the Firecuda laptop drive, though, again, I don't
know if I am having drive- or Windows problems. I think I need to
convert this puppy to UEFI and GPT first, I did that on the other HP
Elitebook, but this one is newer and has so many more security bells and
whistles, the mind boggles. It turned out Acronis actually has an
uninstall routine - one of the problems was that neither Seagate nor
Acronis will let you completely uninstall drive management software. As
this particular combo will only work with Seagate manufactured drives,
there isn't a point in having it installed. Funny way to try and lock a
customer into your brand of disk. Annoying and dysfunctional - and to be
honest, I don't know that there hasn't been a tug-of-war between
Windows 10 and Seagate/Acronis, over control of the disk subsystem. Now
that I have all of their crap out of the OS, I guess the next step has
to be an image scan, then the UEFI and GPT conversion, that is, after
all, what the HP chipset was designed for, and once that is stable I can
Bitlocker the lot.
Hmm. First time I cloned the drive, using Seagate's version of
Acronis' cloning software. That re-sizes the partitions, to match a
different drive architecture. It took a lomg time to come up, after I
swapped the drives, but it booted and ran. Whether something went wrong
there, or I have a fault in the motherboard of the HP, I don't know, but
after another reboot, the next day, the new drive would not come up,
first runnning a CHKDSK, then with another (but different from before)
Windows boot error. Eventually, I left the new drive in the HP, but
booted from a Windows 10 repair disk, which worked this time, and
restored the most recent image back to the new drive (my HPs have an
external eSATA port, with just USB it gets more complicated). Then, I
resized the primary partition, which Windows Backup had restored to the
original 1GB size. I am wondering if my Windows load is corrupt, perhaps
I need to run Microsoft's SFC routine, check the health of my Windows
filesystem. New clone first, though, for safety's sake. For now, it is
working.
While most of today's writing is technical, the picture to the left is
not - I just decided to cook something Indonesian - luckily, Asian
stores here have the spice mixes, and stock the ingredients I remember
from growing up with an Indo Grandma in the house. This is my variant of
Ayam Opor, a spicy chicken stew - the recipe is here.
The picture lower right is me at the gym, something I faithfully do
now, four times a week, without fail, ever since Verizon gave me a
"free" membership with my health plan. I liked this shot, as it has one
of my Singapore Tees - all bought at Changi Airport, where they even had
some they're not allowed to sell in town - next to the on-roof open air
smoking zone-with-pool-and-bar...
What I never knew about these United States, is that after-65 health care is reasonably elaborate - in my case, due to my corporate retiree benefits-cum-Medicare,
it can get very elaborate. Annual vision exam, hearing exam, annual
wellness exam, just to get you in the doctor's office - which the
insurance not only fully covers, but pays you (by way of a gift
card) for taking. Talking to a relative overseas, the other day, who had
taken a spill and now needs a new shoulder, I realized she had not been
to see her GP in over five years. Thing is, as you get older,
deterioration, if any, creeps up on you, it is usually not a sudden
occurrence, unless you have an illness or an accident. I am, of course,
the perfect example - my GP in Virginia noticed a swollen thyroid gland
during a routine annual medical, sent me for tests, and that likely
saved my life - it was stage four. As I just made a slew of appointments
with various clinics to get all my tests done, it was just a reminder
that these things are well taken care of, here. While in countries with
socialized health care folks don't need to worry about insurance, a
Canadian friend and I were reminding ourselves that the level of
preventive care in our home countries isn't half as good as it is here -
rarely, even if you aren't rich. True, if I had not made a boat load of
money in fifteen or so years my Medicare would not have been paid up,
so I suppose I am one of the lucky ones. Whatever you do, kids, pay into
Medicare, you never know if you're going to need it, and without some
kind of insurance you are pretty much toast.
Windows 10 "Creators Update" (I have the Pro version) is not
stable. There is too much stuff in it, and if you go in and manually
turn off the things you do not want, it gets squirrelly. I am talking
about legitimate changes, nothing hacked, but the number of variables is
so large I cannot imagine they caught everything, in development. Not
only that, Microplod put this together so quick there are settings you
can change in three or four different places. Having said that, I myself
add variables I probably should not do, some of which I have little
control over. Take the new 2TB hard disk, for instance, with an 8GB
incorporated SSD, I could have just gotten a (cheaper) regular 2TB
drive, I've noticed that when the silicon needs to fetch or put
something on the real disk, it can slow the disk access process in ways Windows
does not like. Then again, these hybrid technologies interest me, and I
plainly cannot afford a 2TB SSD - mind you, they do come down in price,
a 2TB 2.5" SSD now costs $385 - only a few months ago that would have
set you back the better part of $1,000. That's amazing. Kinda makes
sense, I suppose, I read today's webservers have mostly SSD storage as
well - I know my new Singapore hoster does.
I
wanted to secure the ability to move my Windows 10 install to a
different system, something I have done a few times before, but mostly
always using the license key Microsoft provides for the purpose. I
am actually keeping a couple of rarely used installs around just on old
PCs so I can upgrade a new system, should I need one, buying a laptop
with an aged version of Windows can save loads of money, and I know how
to update that. But today, Windows uses a digital license, which is tied
to the motherboard it is installed on - frequently, changing the hard
drive or the memory can lead to an installation failure. Microsoft's
solution is to marry the install up to a Microsoft ID (email address) -
but I don't want to send the detail of my day-to-day use of the
operating system to them - apart from anything else, it is an invitation
to hackers, as that email address crops up in lots of places on the
internet. The only way to take care of this, it seems, is to create a
separate Windows login, one you don't normally use, but which lets you
reinstall. I tried marrying my Administrator login to an MS ID, but that
simply does not work. Life is a compromise.
I am still backing up my new install, anyway, so I can't change this
system over to Bitlocker until that is done. It is the one drawback of
using a third party backup application to a network (NAS) drive - it can
take days. AISBackup
creates zipped archives, which is a slow process, but works very well.
Once you have an entire drive backed up this way, incrementals aren't a
big deal, and the way it handles its database is exemplary - I include
the ability to retain a copy of each deleted file, which I think is
invaluable. I had an opportunity, recently, to do a full AIS restore
over a running Windows install, and it did that to perfection, including
replacing read-only operating system files during the final reboot. It
isn't commonly done, but you should really always test a backup, and a
backup application, by doing a full restore, you don't want to find out
the hard way. It'll create a Linux boot drive on USB or memory stick
that allows you to access the hard disk and mess with things Windows
won't, and that will do a restore too. Anyway, let me finish that, I
think I have the system otherwise 98% behaving... And I do like this
Elitebook, especially since it lacks some of the gas guzzling "extras"
the other Elitebook has. And more than ever, running a high end business
notebook is badly affected by the battle between HP, Intel and
Microsoft, which often duplicate each other's functionality for no good
reason. An excellent example is the Mobile Data Protection Sensor in
HP's hardware, which protects the hard disk from damage if the laptop is
dropped or bumped while in operation. Protected, I should say, Windows
10 Creator's Update incorporated some drivers that disable the sensor -
it is there, but can no longer talk to the operating system. No
solution, which would have to come from Microsoft.
In the interim, I have moved three expiring internet domains to my Singapore hoster,
saving myself yet more money over Godaddy. To be honest, seeing the
recent goings-on, I don't know that I want to be paying Danica Patrick
any more. Godaddy is more and more consumer oriented (I mean, good luck
to them), their screens are enormous - fine on a tablet or smartphone,
not fine on my 40" - and they don't scale, I can't get all of the
relevant information in one Window. which really should not be rocket
science. Godaddy's level of customization - so they can sell you
facilities they've taken out - is huge, and I find Hostinglah has
a - for me - much more friendly, scalable, interface, and provides all
of the standard tools for free, complete with the privacy protection and
the secure certificates Godaddy wants money for. That's how it should
be - with the amount of cyber-criminality around, protection should be
built in, Godaddy deals with it as if you bought a house, but you have
to pay extra if you want a lock in your front door. So I am glad I am
out of there - besides, I just paid $85 for what Godaddy wants $185 for,
this year, and I have probably twice the facilities I had. In all
honesty, I now have "only" 50GB of storage space, instead of the 100GB I
had, but I don't have that much to store, so it is not an issue. Once I
set up some secure space, I can at least put locked encrypted stuff on
my server space. I am still finetuning AISBackup's FTP facility, but
that really works a treat, although backing up lots of data would take
lots of time. This is partially because I throttle the process, but with
worldwide internet connections, pushing things to their limits ensures
the processes break, you want control and recoverability, and AIS has
been around long enough that it is more or less unbreakable, it recovers
from most failures, by itself - you can't run unattended if that is not
the case.
An in-between day, I guess, though I should be working on my
correspondence. Housework first, though, and I've changed the filter
pack in my heat pump - a somewhat self-concocted filter pack. The heat pump
itself comes only with a plastic mesh filter, but it is built in such a
way that it can take a carbon filter, which I noticed a different brand
from the same manufacturer actually has. So I added a half inch filter
pack, consisting of two cut-it-yourself filters, one of the fiber kind
you can get in sheets at Walmart, another a layer of thin active carbon
material. The pack works well, and even though it offers more air
resistance than the mesh by itself does, it appears not to impact
performance - if anything, it may be working better. Slowing the air
down gets it warmed - or cooled - more intensely, and that does not seem
to bother the compressor / heat exchanger. I did notice the fiber
filter caught more dust, beyond what the mesh filter does, and that
helps keep the heat exchanger clean.
Warg. I do run out of energy, occasionally, and that is likely the
effect of the hyroid hormone I have to take. Or the lack of effect.
While the thyroid gland
makes its hormone "on demand", there is no such mechanism with the
medication, and as I noticed in someone's posting, it can take a long
time to establish a "median" dose for the patient. I didn't really know
this, despite the voluminous documentation given to me, and that
probably is entirely my own fault. Heart arrythmia is probably the most
unpleasant side effect, especially being woken up by it. It continues to
surprise me how much punishment the heart, of which we only have one,
can take, when you wake up in the middle of the night with a sewing
machine going off in your chest you can't help but wonder when this
thing is going to wear out. This especially since you then have to get
blood tests, then adjust the dosage, then wait for three months before
your levels have stabilized enough for another test. Etc. Etc. It is
discombobulating. This is not, don't get me wrong, a complaint, it is
just something I have to live with, whining about it isn't going to do
anybody any good. I recall, after the initial surgery and radioactive
iodine treatment, sitting up in bed with the lights on, being shit
scared, at one point taking out my contact lenses, not seeing well, gave
me panic attacks. You know, I tucked that (2010) back so far I only
just remembered the feeling.
I got to this rant because I do so well working out - only this morning
I realized that it is so much of a routine it is automatic, I never
don't want to go to the gym. Obviously, my medical condition is that
powerful motivator, and I must say it takes a long time for the full
long term effect to set in, in my case complicated by the discomfort
caused by an unrelated arthritis. Gotta tell you, if you have arthritis,
work out. Don't overdo it, but work out, all the time, your body will,
over time, learn to combat your ailment. Most importantly, unaffected
joints and muscles will begin to compensate for the ones that don't work
well. Trust me, I've been doing this dance a long time, the body
learns, slowly, but it learns.
Having spent a lot of time, and a good amount of money, trying to figure out why the 4.7l V-8
in my Durango was "surging" while idling, I have not really figured out
what caused it. I replaced all sorts of vacuum and throttle control
parts in the air intake and throttle body - in the picture to the right,
that is the unit at the right end of the chrome (aftermarket) air
intake tube on top of the engine (click on the picture to see an
enlarged version). I ran cleaning agents through the fuel system,
replaced various components that, under control of the ECU (engine
computer), manage air and fuel mix, and idle and running RPM, but every
time it either didn't help, or the surging came back. Now, at least
since sometime January, it seems to have cured itself, and I can't
figure out why. I stopped putting an octane additive in my gasoline, I
was always doing that, and there is a shield underneath the front of the
engine I removed, as I need to change my oil, and with the shield in
place I can't get at the oil filter, to replace that. Now, the engine is
smooth as a gravy sandwich, at this point, not even vibrating, no
surging, nothing. So I guess I'll change the oil, then put the shield
back, and see if we keep running fine. Just wish I understood what is
causing the difference, there are so many different causes on the
internet, that all it does is cause confusion. Ah, yes, I've replaced
the OBDII Bluetooth ELM327 scanner as well, the one I bought back in
2013 was getting erratic, considering it had lived in the car, winter
and summer, not a surprising event for a $10 device. It is always
possible a "bad" OBDII device, which is capable of resetting the
transmission control unit and the ECU, was sending wrong signals to the
computer. Unlikely, but possible. Yes, the new OBDII scanner has been in
since mid-January, so there is another variable. Pff. I just don't like
engineering things I don't understand... not used to that.
It
is unusual for the internet to go down, and even more unsual for the
provider to make no attempt to fix it. While the Frontier call center
person said he'd get an engineer involved, this on Saturday early
evening, by Sunday morning nobody had looked at it at all, according to
another call center person. Not only that, the original complaint
translated into a service call scheduled for Monday, the third day -
this even though, according to my router, there was an active Ethernet connection
to the fiber CPE, the Frontier head end was just not providing DHCP, it
wasn't generating an IP address. Frontier being a regulated
telecommunications company, not providing 24 hour service is just not
on, and the support person, this morning, wasn't even able to escalate
the trouble report. Eventually, am email tells me the repair visit is
scheduled for Monday 7pm (by which time I doubt there is cover at the
Central Office, should they need it) - a full 48 hours after the initial
report - this is a regulated phone company?
Using my slower Bluetooth connection on the Blackberry, I mostly notice
that many websites simply won't work on slower internet connections,
between the overload of information their try to present, and the
megabytes of data they try to pull from your surfing and clicking, they
don't even have the basic capability to adjust their output to the speed
of the viewer. That's awful. I can switch to "hotspot" mode on the
Blackberry, and get decent throughput, but then I tend to use a lot of
data, so much of the time Bluetooth is best, to, umm, protect me from
myself. I am glad I have that backup - it is one of the reasons why I
keep the Blackberry Z10 around, that is much data-faster than any of the Android devices.
Eventually, after an almost 48 hour outage, a technician came and
swapped out the fiber modem, I had not expected that to go South inside
of three years, especially since this is a CPE that can be mounted
outside, though ours is not. Worse: fixed on Monday, on Wednesday the
internet service died again. Frontier sent a technician the next day,
this time, and he soon found that in the "outside plant", the
neigbourhood connection box that hooks homes up to a fiber aggregator,
someone had removed and re-used our connector, thinking we were out of
service. Easily fixed, but ba-a-a-ad...
It kind of messes up my week, already filled with doctor's
appointments, this after a technician at UW Medicine messed up my blood
tests, I think it is kind of amazing they don't really teach these folks
communication skills. I went in asking for one test my doctor wanted me
to take, and the technician added another I was supposed to take later,
without telling me. This occasionally happens at the Polyclinic too,
but the folks there at least discuss these things, and pick up the phone
to check with the doctor's office. Not so at UW Medicine, where they
even perform tests not authorized by Medicare, which then have to be
taken off the bill later, when I complain.
Anyway, the sun is here, it is, after cold and wet and snow, time for
Spring. Wasn't a bad winter, but it gets in your bones, you know what I
mean?
I found a small and inexpensive ($32.99) IP camera
that I think will make a wonderful front door spy cam. If I can get it
working the way I like, it should provide motion activated recording the
way the bigger camera described below (January 8) does, as well as
alert me to the presence of a hu-man on the porch, as well as let me see
(and talk to) whoever rings the doorbell. That'd be cool. Let me
actually check if it will talk to the application I set up on the
Toshiba, all I should have to do is change the IP address. Be right
back.
Yep. That worked. Tomorrow first thing I'll run a data capture, see how
this - more wide angle - lens works with the iSpy application, that will
be great. Yes, it could be stolen (as in, broken off) from the front
door, but then the thief would capture him- or herself while doing the
deed, and the video and stills will be on my Singapore server by the
time they realize they're on candid camera. I just need to set the
motion detection sensitivity in iSpy, I could conceivably get an alert
with a picture when someone is at my door, whether I am home or not. If
you think that's expensive - dunno, $40 camera, $200 old "retired"
laptop, and if, like me, you do not want to use the manufacturer's
cloud, a website with ftp, which I pay $35 a year for, can in principle
be had for free at Freeservers. I'll actually test this camera with
Freeserver space and ftp, see what gives. By the way, I was futzing with
video files, the other day, and to my astonishment noticed I can stream
video from my new hosting server. In the past, I was never able to, and
have kind of always assumed you had to pay more and get additional
facilities to stream. But Hostinglah lets me, seemingly without issues
(depending, of course, on the speed of your internet and the caching
ability of your browser). Try here.
Hmm. Hearing test, now part of my insurance-standard annual series of
checks. I've intermittenty had some hearing problems, mostly related to a
tinnitus - buy a new gun, go home, get your hearing protection before
you test it, all it needs is not having it just once - that seems to be
getting worse - after fifteen years or so. Test wasn't that good, ENT
specialist next, I guess. Blah. The audiologist managed to not
send me the results, as "our system does not support PDFs". That system,
in use by some of the major medical establishments in the Puget Sound
area, has never supported PDF documents, and for Ms. Hutchison
to pretend this is unusual, when she must have spent years not
e-sending her test results to patients, is beyond the pale. If you know
your document is not going to make it, why send a patient an empty
message? Could she email it to me? No, she says, has to be USPS, no
explanation. Preposterous.
I worried a bit about watching older comedy and police series all the
time, but then I realized I am just fussy. I just keyed up Endeavour,
the prequel to Inspector Morse, on British ITV, and that certainly
qualifies as current. Much of the rest of the current fare just doesn't
agree with me, simple as that. A lot of the TV series I don't
like are just too fictitious - having said that, not everybody has spent
years on Wall Street, in the ascendance of the World Wide Web, in the
ascendance (and invented some) of the cloud, gone through 9/11 as a
"participant", flew on Concorde, stayed at the Waldorf Astoria, and took
747-400 shuttles to buy deodorant in Singapore when they ran out in
Kemang. I really can't say I am pining for more exitement, or that there
are some experiences I've not had, that are high on my bucket list.
That isn't meant for bragging, but I don't watch TV just because there
are things there I would like to experience. I never made it to JPL,
even though one of my friends at NASA in Maryland was really rooting for
it, but there were so many other things I fell in on, and couldn't
really let go of - have you ever been put in charge of the high speed
data networks on Wall Street and at the Pentagon at the same time? So I moved to an office - a secure
office with military types and a safe room - across from the Arlington,
VA, Courthouse, with a view of Arlington National Cemetery. Ah yes, and
I got married at the New York State Supreme Court, the building you see
Law & Order's Jack McCoy walk in and out of, on Centre Street. My
employer provided the stretch limousines, with New York license plates
Wall 1, Wall 2 and Wall 3, a bit of a trader tradition on Wall Street. I
moved to D.C. from 140 West St, the building across the street from
where the World Trade Center was, and hired the webmaster of the Joint
Chiefs, who was retiring from the Pentagon, as my webmaster. Then
they hit both downtown Manhattan and the Pentagon, postponing my
September 11 doctor's appointment for 8 months.
You can't make that stuff up, I guess, and there isn't a blockbuster
movie I can watch that outscores the movie that will play in my head
until the day I die. Not just because of what I got to witness, but
because what I lived through was connected with people I knew,
worked with, bought breakfast with, talked to in the elevator. Having a
Warthog buzz my office after pulling out of a Missing Man during a
funeral at Arlington became routine.
Anyway, this isn't a whine, I was just thinking out loud. It does, now
that I think about it, explain why these fictional two hour movies don't
really appeal to me. And I think the fiction has become more
fictitious, over the years - someone fist fighting three other guys, and
not having to go to the emergency room with a broken jaw, after, just
spoils my appetite for the narrative based on that. Additionally, having
to pay Amazon, Netflix as well as Comcast or Verizon for movies - I
know how much some folks' cable bill is, that's just ridiculous. Well, methinks.
All of a sudden I am up to my ears in legal things - a deceased
relative's probate, a complaint I should file against a foreign
government's illegal practices, a complaint I should file against a
medical practitioner, it isn't my favourite activity, but if I don't do
it, nothing will happen, the time I have. A buddy I need to talk to
about 9/11, stuff. I don't think I used to procrastinate like this -
anyway, let me see, tomorrow, if the weather is a good as today, and
change my oil. Car is doing fine, but on an older V-8, you need to keep it up.
Ah yes. And then the drain plug won't turn, and I nearly stripped the
edges, so I had better get to O'Reilly's, get a new one, and then try
again. If that doesn't work, to Pep Boys for an oil change. Darn. Don't
know if my arthritis is interfering with the strength in my hands,
either, I think I need to talk to my rheumatologist about a change in
medication. The current combo doesn't cut it, just too much pain and
probably some inflammation.
Having said that, it is Spring, I've cut the grass, and the daytimes are
warming up so I can start on the outdoors chores and car stuff. Not
bad. Humidity dropped to 50% this afternoon, way below what is was the
past few months - my new weather station has indoor and outdoor
humidity readings, helpful if you don't have a thyroid, and your body
response isn't regulated the way the good Lord intended it. Being able
to see both temperature and humidity means I can tell whether it is cold
or I am cold, and crank up the heating - or soon: cooling - a bit.
The lawyers want me to prove I spent more than 48 hours below Canal
Street, after 9/11. I can't for the life of me remember who I met with,
who I talked to, what I did, and without my Lotus Notes I have no way of putting it all together. I didn't even think of my email, sheesh, I should talk to someone about this.
At a discounted $3 per pound, stuffed bacon wrapped chicken breast is a
good freezer deal, any more, and I could do it myself. $2.40 per one
meal portion, in other words. The only reason this picture is here is
that, in doing a full reinstall of Windows 10 Pro, I replaced some
applications with newer versions, like the XnView media handler, which
meant I wanted to take a picture and process it down for this webpage.
Embedded copyright was an issue - at this point, I still don't know if
that worked, or not. FWIW, here it is...
A full reinstall of Windows may be a bit of a headache, but Microsoft
seems to be getting the message: a customer must be allowed to reload
whatever Windows came with their hardware, or whatever Windows they paid
for, and privacy really is important to a lot of consumers - well, I
guess especially after the recent Facebook data abuse, this is being
hammered home. It is nobody's fault but their own - making Facebook
users personal information accessible is Facebook's idea, not anybody
else's. It is like the gun argument - sell people firearms, and some
will use those to kill with, because the honour system cannot be
guaranteed to work. In the case of Facebook, if you use people's
information to manipulate them, opportunists will notice and use your
tools for their own purposes. Consumers should take the blame, too - you
make information available, you're putting yourself in harm's way.
If you are using what started out as an older version of Windows - the
updates are not fully able to bring your Windows 10 Pro up to scratch,
although they will work fine. In this particular re-install, I found out
HP's BIOS code for the Elitebook 2570p wasn't fully UEFI "cognizant" -
UEFI being the PC firmware technology that secures your boot drive to
its motherboard, as well as providing the ability to use drives larger
than 2 terabytes in a PC or laptop. I don't have laptop drives larger
than that, but I do have some other, larger drives, and I should imagine
I'll eventually go to 4 terabyte mobile drives, once they become widely
available. More importantly, with UEFI and a Trusted Processing Module I
can fully encrypt my system with Bitlocker, with nobody ever being able
to use the disk, use the motherboard, or read the data on the disk.
Well.. ever - but it'll be a while before someone can process through
the signature and encryption.
So when I wanted to reinstall the drive, and ran HP's BIOS update to
full UEFI just before, Microsoft no longer recognized my Digital License
- worse, it disabled my activation code, so I couldn't even teach it
who I was. Only the Microsoft email registration was able save the day,
and re-register this Windows 10 install. I realized, too, that if I set
up a separate, non-Microsoft registered login, and disabled Windows' use
of Microsoft email through Windows' policy settings, Microsoft wouldn't
receive data from anything in that login - I am not using their "apps"
or anything in their store. Long story short, the reinstall, this time,
went very smoothly, and from a security perspective, this HP notebook is
completely up to snuff. Now I can finish the last couple of
applications, then back up, restore onto the hybrid Seagate drive I
wanted in here, and encrypt the boot drive. Haha.
Wow. Now, even the Secure Boot, part of GPT format and UEFI boot, works.
Seems all perfect - though I just looked at the TPM, and that now wants
resetting. It'll have to wait until I have a complete recover image
ready. But all in all, a lot of stuff simply works, even the latest VLC,
strike three, still working on Bluray though. No, I am not. I pulled
version 2.8.8, reinstalled version 3.0.1, which I couldn't get to work
before, but it does fine with recorded TV now, and after re-installing
the Bluray keys, I was able to watch Ender's Game. Teehee - done! I
really did not expect the reinstall to be his smooth, nor did I expect
it to solve as many problems as it has. Psyched. The "proof of the
pudding" will be when I get this install back on the hybrid Seagate
Firecuda drive where it started, that gave nothing but problems, though I still
do not believe it has anything to do with the hybrid drive architecture.
The picture to the right has nothing to do with any of this. Well. A
little, mebbe. With some of my applications changed, and my webpage
editor changed (I was using Seamonkey Composer before, but on the HP
2560p under Windows 8.1, it was slow), I need to find a different way to
embed copyright notices in picture files, both inside the code, and on
the picture, and I picked this 2012 picture I shot near my sister's
apartment in Amsterdam. Pretty. I've been talking to her more than
usual, as she recently had pretty invasive surgery, coping well, thank
heavens. Memories...
Of course, when you reinstall Windows 10, with the latest bells and whistles, you find some of your favourite applications have "new-versioned", and there really isn't any point not using the latest, so that adds a learning curve to the day or so spent turning off everything in Windows you don't want to use. One real problem with Windows (and Facebook, and Google, and.. and.. and..) is that its built-in "apps" all want to use Microsoft's Cloud to store things in, where, despite Microsoft's best intentions, your information is available to Microsoft to sleuthe through, and any cybercriminal worth their salt. I know all of these folks do their best to keep their networks secure, but you can read in the "tech" section of every newspaper which system got hacked this week. It is pretty much horrendous. And giving Facebook more "security" information, like pictures, phone numbers, and trusted friends, only results in Facebook having more information about you. Information that can be hacked, stolen, and sold. So I don't know about you, but I don't. I don't use anybody's Cloud, and few "free" services.
Hmm.. A while ago, (British) ITV, when I was no longer able to access their programming, said in its helpfiles they only now supported Google Chrome, and I duly installed that, worked OK. Recently, though, playback on Chrome began to hiccup, and in the transition from program to ad to program hung. Forever. Trying Microsoft Explorer, which I had been using before, just now, I discovered that now works with ITV again. No idea why - in most browsers, ITV is forever complaining I run an ad blocker, which I don't use, although I have every browser set up to reject third party cookies (which anybody can push onto your system!), and to stop popup windows - but no (plugin) ad blockers. Hmm. Do I dump Chrome now? With Seamonkey, I know I am using an older browser, but when editing my own website I have always wanted to make sure it is compatible with anything, you have no way of knowing what people access your server with. Seamonkey lets me examine and troubleshoot my HTML, which is a nice facility to have if you "roll your own".
So I had a look at the Opera browser, whose existence I was aware of, but never used until I bought the Blü smartphone, which came with it pre-installed. I've now found out Opera's Windows compatible browser actually has a VPN built in, so you can surf using a remote IP address, without immediately showing websites who and where you are. Between the VPN and Opera's "secure" mode, I've got exactly what I wanted Chrome and the Tor browser for, so I was able to dump them both. I did install the Tor network stack (that link goes directly to the Tor expert bundle download!), which lets you insert a Tor sox proxy in your internet settings, but then any application using the primary IP will go through Tor, and many sites, like Google and Yahoo, go completely crazy when you use that. Google pretends it is looking after your internet security when it refuses to let you access your account when your IP address changes, so even when you use a tablet as well as a laptop as well as a smartphone, Google forces you to divulge every network you use to them, even though changing networks all the time is one of the very good ways for you to be untraceable and thus safe. Using one network stack and IP address all the time, which Google wants you to do, is actually very unsafe.
Tracking my finances was a bit precarious, the past year, as I had added a credit card to the mix (my first since losing most of my money in 2008, and the rest, my health and my house in 2010), and so, from March 2017, I was not able to compare apples with apples, as there was no debt account before. Now that it is March again, that "problem" is solved, and my software not only compares deposit account values, but debit account values, and I am back in "known territory". I had forged some workarounds, but the predictive algorithm in the software can't work when it compares different numbers of accounts, with different functionalities. Now, like it is supposed to, it adds all of it up, above and below the line, and I end up with a balance, and a past-year comparison. You'll probably want to suggest I just do it on a bit of paper, but that does not give me a time-based comparison. Using financial software is kind of a reward type activity, when you see a consistent upward trend graphic developing you know you're on the way up, and that keeps you on your toes in terms of being frugal, because you want it to look like that the next month, and the next quarter. I've come a fairly long way since making it here, and with the debts paid and my credit restored - actually, I am in the middle of having my front crown re-installed, lost through an accidental fall, and hopefully the Seattle apartment is not far off. So there. I've gotten anal to the point I even add gift cards to my balances, after all, if you get an Amazon reward card from your health insurance you're going to use that money for something you'd otherwise use credit for, so it has to be in the mix. And while I am not worried I'll go crazy using credit, been there, done that, I want to make absolutely sure my software offsetss future earnings against current outgoings, as credit gets paid in the future. Actually spent untold hours getting the financial software to faithfully predict - round robin, if you're not comparing apples with apples, over time it won't work.
One of those non-days. Booting my primary laptop, it had trouble talking to my external Bitlocker encrypted drive, and the scan it wanted didn't complete, so I ended up disconnecting all external devices, and booting from a repair DVD. The interesting part - apart from the recovery costing me half the morning - is that this was the first time ever I used a UEFI boot DVD for recovery, and I had no idea if that would work, or how. But it did, though it said it couldn't repair, then offered to roll the install back to its previous restore point, and when I told it to go ahead, it did the repair instead. Go figure. I do know the failure probably was my fault - I had moved a phone back onto USB, and I think I have run out of interrupts on this unit. So no more (no additional) USB devices... Between USB2, USB3, and eSATA, there just aren't enough interrupts. 2TB disks don't help, either. I've taken the webcam offline, too - one nice thing about this HP Elitebook is that it is one of the "secure" laptops for corporate use - nothing added to hack or break into, and it has a more sophisticated T(rusted) P(latform) M(odule) than my other Elitebook, which did come with camera and fingerprint sensor. In hindsight, this is the laptop to carry overseas, once I have Bitlockered the boot drive - with only a code in my head, nobody can break into this thing (for as long as I don't use my birthday..).
That was a bit stunning - Kim Jong-un stepping into South Korea, crossing the demilitarized zone. Is this another Berlin Wall moment? This stuff gets weirder by the week..
Spring.. I don't like this waiting game, especially since I've played it for quite a while already, and all I do now is taking it slow and saving money while waiting for an apartment. Don't get me wrong, I am lucky I can, I am lucky I drug myself out of the 'mire, until a year ago, I was not sure I'd be able to avoid filing for bankruptcy, but I have. It doesn't feel like an achievement, losing most of everything, and surviving, but I suppose it is. Still have one car, with insurance and tax paid. How lucky can you get.
Windows 10's April "update" turns all of the sharing-data-with-Microsoft settings you've painstakingly turned off back on, adds parameters to that, and resets Edge, adding startup and icons even if you have turned Edge (which shares data and your mail login with Microplod) off, while it tries to re-enable its email application. In my case, I use a popmail application that does not share data with Microsoft, and does not put my email in Microsoft's Cloud (itself turned off) for "storage". You need to understand all of this "sharing" has two risks: first of all, Microsoft reads all of your email and files - completely unimportant what they say about your privacy, when Microsoft reports folks who access and distribute kiddie porn to the FBI (no problem with that), that means they have to parse (read) mail and files, and track the IP addresses the perp accesses. No two ways about that. So I laboriously turn everything off that gives Microsoft access to my data (including Microsoft's firewall, you can use a separate, external, physical firewall, behind your router(s), much more effective than Windows' firewall). Important: if you don't keep files in the default directories, they are harder to find. If you use tools that aren't common, hackers may not find how to get through, or use, them. We know this now: self driving cars don't necessarily recognize things they are programmed to recognize - humans, fire trucks, road dividers come to mind. If humans programmed it, it is, by definition, faulty.
I thought my car needed repairs, but it looks like I was wrong - after topping up the A/C and the fluids, and having an oil change and wheel rotation done, all seems to be well, I did get the pressure washer out and gave the engine, heat exchangers, undercarriage, wheels, brakes, and the aftermarket air filter a good clean. Wash and wax is next, but the engine front and undercarriage kind of pick up more crud than you'd think. I do want to change the coolant and flush the cooling system, properly, this summer - not something I have done before, but slowly time - I did change the coolant two years ago, but I think a pressure flush will help the cooling. Not that she runs hot - the engine is programmed to run hot, for the sake of complete combustion, and I have changed the air handling system to give 'er a bit more air. As it turns out, the OEM air handler is heavily baffled, so the big V8 doesn't make as much noise as it can. That's cosmetic, and on an older engine not necessarily helpful, as it reduces the air flow into the manifold. Anyway, she is doing fine, and I have topped up the A/C more than I normally do, out of caution, and that actually works much better... Didn't add compressor lubricant, did that last year, and that does not help with the system efficiency. More "raw" refrigerant, this time, and we're doing better, lotsa cold air.
Well, a day down, and I have largely finished setting up my "new" Blackberry Priv, not helped by the fact that some Android phones work differently from others. I've not followed Android very closely, so don't even know what silly name we're up to today... I do know the setup process is "long and involved". Just downloading an installing the latest Android version, after SIM activation, took a whopping four hours. And, kids, that will only get worse, over the years, for no real reason, I am sure we could fix that if we really wanted to.
So now I really need to find some space to fly the drone - the backyard is just too small - that is to say, if I let 'er rip she'll fly into something, and then a propellor will break, or sumtin'. The thing is so light even a tiny gust of wind sets her adrift. Anyway, it is working, and I am learning to trim and roll and things.
After some diligent programming on my T-Mobile router, I've finally managed to get my VPN into the UK running right again. I have two routers - actually, more like three - there is the fiber interface, which is kind of a modem, then I have the "outside" router, alll properly firewalled, and then there is the "inside" router, a model that T-Mobile makes available to some customers so they can use a smartphone as backup internet modem - it otherwise is a pretty quick and clever 802.11ac WiFi and Gigabit Ethernet router. Due to some clever tricks, the "outside" firewall obscures the "inside" firewall, you don't spend ten years in D.C. and don't learn data security. It was, from the lab into the Real World, the one thing I spent years of research on, data security, as more and more "devices", beginning with the mini-computers we used, like the fault tolerant Stratus, were connected to the internet, after we discovered that hackers were dialing around to find modem tones, modems provided so technical support folks could dial into their systems. They got on the nascent internet, too, from when ITT Dialcom began to run its public PDP-11 systems more or less worldwide.
OK. Focus, Menno. I've been thinking about what to do with myself, once I get My Apartment, as I'd like to get "back to work" in some way, I don't know that I have a current IT skillset in terms of mobiles and tablets - they bore me anyway - but I should be able to use my data networking and systems skills in some way. I had, in the past, done some trading on Ebay and Amazon, but found that generally not really satisfying, basically because it revolved around selling stuff I owned, rather than properly marketing, buying and selling. So then I "discovered" AliBaba, AliExpress. That is a different kettle of fish, I realize - you could, if you wanted, buy a dozen E-vans from China or India, and have them delivered to Alaska. Not that I have a desire to do that, but the place is awash with anything that can be bought and sold, I would think that if I wanted to buy three baby elephants, there probably is a vendor on AliBaba who can supply them. Woof. So I guess, other than looking for another place to live, I can spend some time doing research on what all can be done on the AliGroup websites.
Yarg. Just as I think I have everything under control, my landlord announces I've got to move, because he's got to move. Nothing untoward, but his elderly folks are moving into a seniors compound, and that kind of means the whole (tight knit, local) family is going to be doing musical chairs. It isn't a complete disaster, I have some time, but it likely means I will be spending more money, and I had earmarked that for my own move to a Seattle Housing Authority seniors apartment. That's always a hard to plan situation, because the availability of seniors places, once you are on the waiting list, is dependent on someone passing away or moving to a care home, and those are impossible-to-predict events. So there - it isn't a complete disaster, but there's never anything that goes as smoothly as one would wish. Owell.
No, I have not watched the Kavanaugh spectacle. For one thing, you're just looking at a guy, and other guys, and a gal, and other gals, talking, without any way to ascertain who is and isn't lying. Secondly, whatever somebody got up to in high school or college, thirty-five or fourty years ago, is stale. It has no probative value for the person's current demeanour, and there aren't many ways to ascertain how things do or don't get distorted, over time. There's no video. Maybe he was a sleazebag, in high school. I don't know that a bunch of very higly paid national mostly older legislators need to try and get "to the bottom of it", which they can't do from a meeting room. Allegations are just that, allegations. And hoever much we may feel that where there's smoke, there's fire, that is not any kind of proof, in our world. Even the BBC is broadcasting the hearings more or less integrally - why? Why is it vital for the Brits to be able to witness every inch of hearings that have absolutely no bearing of English society? I keep fearing the British watch every second of "American" news because, in the throes of Brexit, they actually believe this "special relationship" claptrap - the BBC actually broadcast more of the Kavanaugh hearings live than the American broadcasters did. Folks, please be aware that we don't get Prime Minister's Question Time, or House of Lord's deliberations, all over TV. PBS broadcasts BBC World News (world, not domestic), and Nightline, but other than that, we get Endeavour Morse, and most folks in the U.S. of A. do not watch PBS. Well, yes, late at night, to get away from the infomercials that sell you stuff you don't need, at inflated prices.
So not only did I find a new specialist, highly competent, but as I sit in her surgery getting acquainted, I find out that not only did she intern at the (now defunct) Manhattan hospital that treated me after I moved there from London, she lived in the same little downstate New York town I did! Of all the.. it truly, at times, is a really small world.
Finally got to the point I could get my flu shot - between the immuno-suppressant medication and a bout with bronchitis, I did not want to chance it, but at this point, my lungs have returned to normal, I am working out as normal, I've stopped most immuno-suppressants, so I might as well. Now I need to figure out what the heck Verizon Benefits is up to, I got a letter stating the annual enrollment is no longer necessary, as if I knew all about it, but I did not. So I guess I need to call HR, especially as when I model the plan, it seems to cost less than what I currently pay, which is what I'd be paying next year. It does mention that there can be "life events", and that those can update by the month, and I guess I can change plans, too, whenever I want, I really need to sit down and spend some time figuring out what it all means.
Hmm. Something I never really did was compare contact lens brands, kind of figuring that much of the "technology" is more or less hype, there clearly are only a few compounds able to be worn in the eye for long periods of time, while retaining shape, which is where much of the correction comes from.
If you are running Windows 10, you'll know the October update really did a number on people, removing file structures and deleting files, to the point Microsoft actually withdrew it altogether. So the October update is now available once more - in November... I've downloaded the disc based installer, in ISO format, so I can do the install while watching what happens - otherwise, Windows does it "in the background", leading to your being unable to use your system in the middle of something important. That's supposed to be seamless, but as we know from experience, that is not something Microsoft has been able to do for quite a few years. Yes, there are a gazillion different installs of PCs and laptops and tablets, but if you want to produce an operating system for-the-masses, you have to make it perfect. So when you listen to Microsoft's plans and prognostications and high tech endeavours, know this - from someone with 20+ years of developer expertise - : Microsoft does not have the ability, probably does not allocate sufficient resources, to fully debug its products. This is especially important for business and government officials needing to decide about Cloud based services, as the upshot must be that if Microsoft is unable to properly support its operating system, it can't support a world wide network, either.
The revamped Windows 10 October update does install, but I went through a series of failures whose cause I don't know. What worked for me - but I must emphasize I have an installation that dates back to Windows Vista, with legitimately obtained updates and upgrades - is to tell the ISO installer (from DVD) to not download and install "updates and new features", making sure to run a full update immediately before doing the install. So if your installation fails and uninstalls by itself, as mine did three times, that's something you might try. Everything seems fine, and I have now done the install on another laptop - curiously, there, it decided to offer to install "new features", even though I had told it not to. Go figure. Most of those new "features" share your data with Microsoft's server network, so if you have the time, try to turn all of this crap off, so you don't tell Microsoft where your laptop is 24/7. The "where" taken literally - Windows is able to locate in several different ways, and even if you have the GPS turned off, there is now a setting that lets "apps share location data", which is on by default. You can only turn it off in the Group Policy Editor, an editor you have to wade through each update, to see what Microsoft have added to defeat the settings you did last time.
Changes to long term medication, as it turns out, are more traumatic than you'd think. I've done it before, but kind of forgot how substantial it is - tapering, after several years, off the PTSD antidepressant treatment I was on needed push and concentration, and I guess this time is no different. Although, I have been on biologics for some eighteen years, at this point, and I really didn't have a truly medical reason to want to stop Humira. But medication becomes a crutch, over time, and you no longer know what the benefit is - know, as in experiencing the curative value. I had spent several months off Humira, leading up to and after surgery, and not feeling any different off the medication, I kept wondering if I should not make that a more long term effort. Then, my rheumatologist didn't want to let me quit, without even giving me a rational argument I could live with. So then, you're forced to change specialists, which is traumatic, if you've been seeing someone for years.
No snow in the Puget Sound lowlands, well, as of yet, though there is plenty in the mountains that surround us, and we have persistent night frost, but sunny warm-ish days. I am cold, but I think that is mostly due to medication changes. At a point where I've not walked to the gym, which I normally do, since well before Christmas, but I am compensating by maintaining a two day schedule, and hitting the treadmill instead. Since my workout partner now hardly goes to the gym, and no longer takes walks at all, my schedule is really my own, though I'll be pleased when the weather improves and I can work on my vitamin D again. I don't believe that supplements have the same effect as sunshine - having said that, my skin is no longer as sun-resistant as it once was.
It does look like, ahead of moving, I have my finances under control, always depending on what the Seattle Housing Authority will want for rent, how much of my medical expenses they will take into account. We'll see. But I am able to furnish an apartment and move, glad I gave it extra time to save and control cost. I've even found out that changing doctors saved me money - Swedish, probably due to clever coding of their bills, charges me less copay than The Polyclinic does. The latter does not even respond to letters or billing disputes, so I am well pleased I have moved most of my care away from them.
While I have a small SSD (Solid State Drive) in the old laptop I've dedicated to managing my monitoring cameras, that doesn't serve an essential function. I tried one of the highly acclaimed larger SSD's a few years ago, and immediately came acropper, with the entire file system self destructing, and nothing recoverable. Crucial, the manufacturer, was absolutely no help, and I kind of decided SSD's weren't ready for the big time. You have to remember I am an old guy, I've seen hard disks self destruct decades ago, but certainly not in the past 20+ years. Drive failures, data loss, sure, but nothing I couldn't recover with the right tools.
Stomach cramps and associated doctor visits waylayed my activities for a couple of days, and I had forgotten that the then prescribed laxatives have unpleasant effects. Especially the first day, at a high dose. But much better now, thank you, and only annoyed by not being able to go to the gym for a few days. I had intended to walk today, get at least some exercise, but then got over-absorbed by my HP Windows 8.1 laptop acting up. Its fan had been running riot for a week or so, intermittently, so today I spent some time figuring out why. Turns out that, for reasons I do not understand, it was synchronizing external disk mounts to the internal disk - which, as it has a 2 terabyte hybrid disk now, actually works. But the CPU load was huge, and besides, I hadn't set it up to sync, and have no idea why it decided to do that. Thus I had to figure how to turn sync off, which you need to do in two places, and I had one off, and one on. Seems to have worked, so hopefully I won't be woken up by a 747 ramping up in the middle of the night any more. Don't get many of those overhead any more, although there still is the occasional new freighter coming out of the Boeing factory up the road. They still sell them, and refurb the occasional passenger 747 being resold, as well, those fly mostly in Africa and Asia.
On one router, internet blocking for a device is done in a filter, on another, it is in the "parental settings" - time was when router manufacturers used similar language, but no more. And some of the settings in my T-Mobile / ASUS router I only figure out now, when moving it to a secondary position, preparing to take it when I move. The other router is really the landlord's FIOS primary, it gets to stay. No, it isn't that my move is imminent, but because I do not know when an apartment will come through, it seems best to prepare for that eventual eventuality. Never done a move this well planned, I am even able to more or less plan down to the nearest dollar. Not bad, I just hope it will happen this summer. Thankfully, Seattle isn't like London, New York or Amsterdam, where it can take ten years to qualify for rent controlled apartments, I realize.
All in all, it took me some five hours to swap the routers out - this now becomes a bit of an ordeal, because WiFi "devices" like my printer and the IP cameras have to be reprogrammed while they're still active on the old router, as you can't access them once the router comes down. So programming the new router information, and then changing them to DHCP, is vital. They can be reset and reprogrammed, but that is a fair amount of work, and avoidable - and in all cases, requires an "app" that helps itself to your contacts and device information for no reason. I managed to reprogram and swap the primary router, but the secondary took more of an effort, although I don't really understand why. Once reprogrammed, it talked to the firewall router, said it was internet-connected, but not until a half hour later could I actually convince my laptops to connect to the internet, even though they were talking to both routers. I have a sneaking suspicion the firewalls just shut down when the network parameters change, for a while, although I can't really prove that. Assigning a static IP address outside the DHCP range helped too, though, again, I don't really know why. Anyway, it is all working, and in the morning I'll check that my IP camera cloud setup (not their cloud, my own) is working, while I am at the gym. I am really pleased with the way iSpy detects and alerts on motion, so you can do that completely independently from the camera, which often will only send alerts to the programmer's grandma in Shenzen. The firewalling, then, is vital, and as the firewalls on the routers work differently, it isn't just a matter of transferring settings - you have to figure out how to assign ports and destinations on the new device - where the old device used IP addresses, the new device uses the domain with the UDP port, and that just isn't easily translatable. Etc.
Following the Brexit developments in Britain, mostly on the BBC, it occurs to me the British spend inordinate amounts of time broadcasting American news, even though that often is not at all relevant to England and the English. Every time Donald Trump sneezes, the BBC broadcasts it live - there are probably more BBC correspondents based in Washington, D.C., than in Belfast. Yet, when something happens in France or Spain or Thailand, where hundreds of thousands of Britons live, if it isn't a terror attack, it does not get reported. I am increasingly getting the impression that the Brits confuse language with love - Americans like Britain, but our evening news is not peppered with traffic accidents in Luton or Glasgow. It is increasingly unclear to me where this obsession with things American comes from, but if the British are abandoning the alliance with their neighbours in favour of an alliance with the USA, I think they're barking up the wrong tree. In the EU, Brits could live and work in the EU at will - in an alliance with the USA, they're going to have to stand in line with the Afghans and the Pakistanis to get work permits and green cards - as much as I like the UK, they're not making anything the world is pining for, they've largely sold off the family silver, and you really can't build an export economy on Stilton, whiskey and HP sauce (now made in The Netherlands). Just sayin..
While I got some outdoorsy stuff done yesterday, in a lovely sun, today that rain is back, it is chilly, I don't even feel like replacing the left brake light bulb I discovered yesterday was part dead. I do need to get the oil done, but have now decided to go to Pep Boys, as they owe me a free wheel rotation, time for that. Need to weed whack the back, as well...
Of course, after the Windows updates, I need to update my backup laptop as well, not a good idea to access the same file with different version applications. Every time you make a change, you create more work for yourself - it is almost busywork. By the way - I recently discovered Google Voice has increased its call charges to The Netherlands from 1 cent a minute to 18 cents a minute - so I looked for an alternative, and found Telz for Android, which charges less than even that penny-per-minute. Works well, too, it can do either VOIP from your smartphone, or use a callback. Clean audio, slight voice delay, but nice uninterrupted half hour call. Cheapest I could find that appears reliable, secure, you can set individual permissions for the app, and it tells the callee your real number, cool. The pleasant experience was repeated this morning, when I unexpectedly had to call my bank in Europe, and the customer service person - unbid - remarked that the line was so clear. Calls from cellphones can often be choppy, but Telz' VOIP over my Blü WiFi has remarkable quality.
Finally scraped enough money together to have one of my front teeth fixed, a crown that came off when I fell on my face after being attacked by a dog. Part of the problem was that three consecutive dentists wanted to do a root canal on that perfectly healthy tooth - the crown (really a cap) had come off, but there was no damage to the tooth, as far as I was aware, the crown was there for purely cosmetic reasons. The root canal would have added some $1,000 to the treatment, and I didn't know whether the dentist in D.C. who placed the crowns - for purely cosmetic reasons - had done a root canal, or whether that was really necessary. My new dentist, Ted Hennessey, DDS, in Lynnwood, was the first who said it wasn't necessary, there was no damage to the tooth, so I went ahead with his recommendation. As I mentioned, I finally had enough in the kitty for the crown insurance copay, now at the point where I have sufficient savings, with enough to spare for my upcoming move, and emergencies. Phew.
Dr. Hennessey built up the tooth, anchored the buildup under the gums, a bit of a procedure, put a temporary crown on to keep the gums from shrinking back, left that for two weeks, and today the "real crown" went on. Happy, but at the same time a bit of an anticlimax, as I had been waiting and saving for so long - delayed by a molar that had to be surgically removed last year, which cost even more - again delayed by a dental surgeon whose office didn't tell me they were not on my insurance approved list. Surgically removed, as I had long term osteoporosis treatment in the past, with Fosamax, and just pulling it would have been a fairly high risk. But all went well, and as of today I have a "natural" smile again. Teehee. If you are in the Seattle area, this is a good dentist, and one who has no inclination to rip you off. I must say I've seen four, in succession, who all padded the bill, tried to do unnecessary procedures, it is a real racket. You're completely dependent on the dentist's advice, but Hennessey doesn't screw you over - when I told him about my past osteoporosis treatment, he immediately referred me to a dental surgeon, rather than talk me into having him pull the tooth, and make the money. As I have decent dental insurance, this man understands being reasonable and caring will make me come back. Simple. Expect smiling selfies again..
April 20, 2018: Facebook? Just train the people..
Keywords: T-Mobile, Frontier, ASUS, AOL, USB, TPM, Bitlocker, memory, dementia, dual band
Why am I working on this security stuff? I am kinda hoping that once I settle back into my own apartment, I'll be able to find some enterprises out there that have need for this type of security. It interests me, in my Verizon guise I had been in charge of data security for many years, and I have the tools and time to learn this stuff. Step by step, sometimes I have to wait until I can buy new gear, but that's OK too.
Avid readers of my musings may recall I've been trying to track the functionality of my aging brain, not that I expect dementia to set in next week, but it is one of those health related things you're supposed to keep an eye on. I track some of the agility of my grey cells by checking how many passwords, in illogical sequences, I can remember. When I moved the routers around I decided to begin using a ten digit alpha-numeric password I had not used in at least four years, and much to my surprise I found I still have that in memory, and no, it isn't one of those that begins with your mother-in-law's last name. So that's good. I try to kind of follow the research on aging, but there is rather a lot of it, and I must say much that is published does not make a lot of sense, and much "research" is very partial, and really only intended to help researchers apply for new grants, for which they must publish. It is very interesting that mice remember to run in their little treadmills, but I've never met a rodent with a gym membership, nor have I ever met a rodent with a cognitive understanding of the word "exercise", if you follow my drift. It is getting annoying - in the science sections of major newspaper / news sources, half the "science" is to do with smartphones and apps, the other half has nothing to do with science - space is a commercial venture, today, not experimental, and, apparently, archeology isn't "sexy" any more.
Well, Comey's book will sell. I am not sure I'd have given this much of an interview, in his shoes, there must be really bad blood between Comey and Trump, this clearly was not an ordinary firing. Having said that, this is the former head of the FBI, who still has more credit in the government and the political world than Trump will ever have. And Comey clearly has his pension sorted.
Years ago, I bought a Blackberry Playbook tablet, and one of the apps I decided to try was Facebook. That try was very shortlived. I discovered Facebook would not run if it could not access the built-in camera - strange in itself, the Facebook app discovered itself there were cameras, that was not something it asked me, nor did it give me a choice. So, as quickly as I installed it, I uninstalled it - but to this day, Facebook maintains Blackberry permissions, and the few times I accessed Facebook on the tablet using a browser it wanted to re-install the app - it knew where it was.
That's been Facebook's mission from day one - make itself inescapable, take over your computing environment, and most of all, manipulate users into accepting it as "all things to all people". AOL did that before, and AOL might have become Facebook if it had accepted its network would morph into the World Wide Web. It didn't - AOL tried to "keep" its users confined to its infrastructure, separate from the Web, and lost that battle. Facebook came a lot further - hundreds of millions of people do all of their communicating and relating through Facebook - it cannibalized the Internet, the smartphone "desktop", websites that used to get lots of traffic now no longer do, and moving their activities to Facebook means giving that company their intellectual property and the information on their members and visitors. Institutions are only now discovering that having a Facebook button at their website means they're sharing all of the information they have paid for gathering with Facebook - without any Return On Investment. If you're an avid Facebook user, ask yourself this: you start their app on your phone, do you ever log out, and do you know that if you log out it'll still run, hidden from you, in the background? Because if you don't want thing running in the background, you're going to have to go into Settings, and set that up - Google / Android enables that by default, and not because you need it..
Swapping routers, I am getting complaints from the housemates, apparently the Frontier / FIOS router is giving them anemic performance, by comparison with the ASUS that was there before. It isn't surprising - the Frontier router is older, and it is a multi-purpose device, it is designed to deliver both TV and internet. Whether or not you use the TV (we don't) the device still allocates bandwidth to all possible uses, and unlike my newer ASUS, isn't designed for streaming audio and video. Not a conundrum, is speed is an issue (and they might not have noticed if I hadn't let them use my router for over a year), they'll have to get a more state-of-the-art router. Technology standards change every year now - the older router provides "only" 2.4Ghz, the newer router provides both 2.4 and 5Ghz - and 5Ghz is faster, but has less reach, falling back on 2.4Ghz over longer distances. It is a known problem with telco's and cable companies - they buy these devices in large volumes, and by the time they reach the end of their stock, the design is pretty much outdated or even obsolete. Frontier, today, no longer installs these model routers, or even the type of fiber interface that sits in their termination.
April 28, 2018: Starbucks in Pyongyang next?
Keywords: Emmanuel Macron, France, Brexit, Firecuda, SSHD, UEFI, BIOS, HP
Watching the French Prime Minister, Emmanuel Macron, do his thing with Donald Trump and in front of Congress, I have to ask myself if he is, perhaps, playing EU politics, and putting one over on Brexiteer Theresa May. I do not recall ever seeing a French President fluent in English - to the point he cracked puns! - giving an impassioned speech with full-on audience interaction. The world has changed - and to be honest, France, which, by itself, offers more than Britain does, could now be deemed to be the front Monsieur of the European Union, something Theresa May can no longer aspire to. She fronts a British car industry owned by the Chinese, Indians, and Germans, and as I have said, HP sauce is made in The Netherlands and owned by Americans. I am sitting here watching an episode of the Morse prequel Endeavour, good TV, but it is shown here on PBS, not on a commercial broadcast channel. TBS, a large mortgage-provider-turned-bank, in the process of divorcing from Lloyd's Bank, which itself needed to be rescued by the British Government, has now found that its brand new IT system isn't working - not something that is rocket science, a banking IT system, not if you provide banking in English, this has been done, here in the US, hundreds of times, on a far larger scale. So that failure is truly beyond stupid. I've done that myself, turning up an IT system that served millions of customers, and failed - but you don't do that without the proper precautions, which includes a way to fall back on the old system. In our case, it took maybe a minute to back it out - and the affected customers were disconnected and could call/log straight back in, and do their business.
Back to Macron, though, he seems almost un-French - or have the French changed so much? I was married to one, once, upmarket professional background, I just (from my own background) couldn't quite work out how a modern surgeon and his wife could not speak or understand English. Where I come from, if you are a professional and don't have English, half of what happens in the world goes right past you, you're dependent on what someone decides is important to translate (I am not criticizing my ex-inlaws, just showing my own disconnect from The Real World). Same for the Germans, don't get me wrong, they dub TV series over in German to this day, the best way to make sure the kids don't learn other languages, as they can't get the sounds. Lucky me, in small countries like The Netherlands and Denmark and Belgium, dubbing is way too expensive, so we "made do" with subtitles, learning to speak foreign in the process. In Berlin, Captain Picard speaks German, if you follow me. In Paris, French.
Look below, February 21, and you'll see I was trying to install Seagate's 2TB Firecuda SSHD - a hybrid drive, with both a large traditional hard drive, and 8GB of silicon memory "to speed things up"(not a cache, but with drive integration). That drive was intended to replace an older Hitachi (HGST) drive, I'd bought several of those, and they all failed prematurely. The Firecuda did not run as well as I would have hoped, had to do a Windows recover a couple of times, so eventually swapped a 2TB traditional Seagate back in. All the while, I could not figure out where my drive errors came from, testing divulged no problems with the drives, but the Elitebook laptop repeatedly hiccupped for no real reason.
Recently, though, I ran a Windows 10 major update, not the way Microsoft wants it, but from a DVD (ISO load). In the process, Windows gave me an opportunity to do a full UEFI restore / install, this after I updated the HP's BIOS to the latest iteration - and that, too, had a UEFI install. That install, magically, converted my disk format fully to UEFI, maintaining my original Windows installation, and let me do a full UEFI boot (which I need, if I am to completely cxonvert this laptop to Bitlocker security), with the system board settings fully UEFI boot compliant. If nothing else, this means I can now use boot drives larger than 2TB (which I'll eventually do, I am sure), and do a fully encrypted, passphrase secured, boot routine, where the laptop canot be broken into, and the hard disk can only be accessed from this laptop, with the right passcode, and can't be read by anything else. I must say the levels of security available on this HP with this version of Windows is little short of amazing - and this is without the HP Protect Tools suite installed, which would at this point just be overkill.
(One week later) - yes, the UEFI BIOS, combined with the removal of HP's Protect Tools (sorry gang) has, at least with the latest version of Windows 10 Pro with whatever Creators thing they last unleashed, did the trick. Now she is stable as a rock, using the hybrid drive, I no longer have login problems, haven't had a BSOD, although I must admit I have had to remove the 360 Total Security virus protection. That interferes too much with Windows, especially when I discovered it will prevent boot library changes, and if it does that while you're not watcging your screen, the message times out and you won't know it just denied something you could have manually accepted. Pity, I liked it, I don't neccessarily want to use the very invasive Microsoft Defender, but there isn't anything else that isn't bloatware. 360 has a scaled down "Essentials" package, that I liked. Pity. Lioke Protect Tools does, Windows can now natively check if your paired Bluetooth device is close, and prevent anyone logging in if it isn't - HP's software lets you marry that with the finger scanner, but this Elitebook does not have that. That is probably good, as I am running out of interrupts as it is.
May 8, 2018: Mosey on down
Keywords: bankruptcy, moving, SHA, Imxingzhe, HRM, fitness monitor, Bluetooth 4.0, Firecuda, Windows 120, UEFI, HP
At any rate, it looks like, after I pay my dentist (done!), who kindly restored a cosmetic front cap without insisting on the unnecessary root canal, I have enough baksheesh in savings to finance my move, get some furniture - I didn't take any from Virginia, as I'd have had to store that, which I could not really afford, at the time. It is still strange to me I ended up in Seattle, of all places, which was truly not on my list, but there is life for you. I am just hoping the Housing Authority will manage to come through in the next few months, it is beginning to feel my life is on hold - it isn't, but it's been a long slog, and that has not quite ended yet. Just sayin'..
Much to my delight, after doing an update on Windows 10 Pro (no, not the April Windows 10 update, too many problems with that, I created an ISO disk, but turned off updates for Windows, for now), converting the BIOS to full UEFI, and reinstalling the hybrid (both SSD and HD) Seagate Firecuda, the HP Elitebook is running like never before. Very pleasing, does not seem to ramp up the fan as much, and I can "amply" multitask. Right now, I am running a backup, streaming IPTV, and editing, and there is little impact. CPU (2.9GHz i7) is running at 22%, RAM usage is 23% of 16GB, and ethernet is running up to 16Mbps, or under 2%, with two external HD displays active. Magic. Previously, and with a conventional hard disk, I couldn't really do anything else while running a (Windows 7) backup..
Having a hard time getting my Bluetooth heart rate monitor to work, I ended up ordering another one - Bluetooth is hard to diagnose, as in the interim, I had changed phones and applications as well. Applications, as my previous version of Endomondo ran under Windows Phone, and I've changed to an Android handset, and that version of Endomondo is much more elaborate. So the Imxingzhe HRM arrives, and that has the latest Bluetooth version (4.0 I think). Which, of course, won't work with Endomondo. So then I had to figure out whether to return it, or find another app. Found "Cardio Training", that works with the new HR, not as elaborate as Endomondo, but with one advantage - it does not require a registered cloud account that it saves all my workouts to, it lets me record the workout on the local device, and even email it in the form of a spreadsheet. So I'll give it a few days to see if it all works as advertised - I did have to set Greenify to kill the app when I don't use it - and relegate the old monitor to spare. That monitor - which I got in December, 2016 - was a cheapie, so could easily have died, I was pretty amazed it lasted a year on a button battery, so replacing it with another cheapie was the easiest way of testing it. Besides, the newer "smart" Bluetooth 4 technology makes it unnecessary to pair a device with the phone. That isn't a big issue, but sometimes "unpairing" a device when it no longer works can be a pain, especially with laptops. Take my advice: if you no longer need to use a "paired" device, or may not use it for a while, something like that, "unpair" or "remove" it. Removing it once it can no longer talk to your laptop or PC or mobile device, it broke, you gave it away, may or may not work! And again: those "smart" Bluetooth devices you do not need to pair with your phone or PC. The application usually does it for you - only if that does not work, try and "pair" to the device, and connect it as a non-smart device.
While there is not, intrinsically, anything wrong with being a TV quizmaster, I note that Jeremy Clarkson, famously fired by the BBC for beating a staffer, then going on to make too much money at Bezos' Amazon TV, has now finally been adopted by ITV to present a revamp of "Who wants to be a Millionaire?". Quiz shows I have studiously avoided watching, with the exception of "Mastermind", but I've made an exception to see how Jezza takes to the platform. More money in his pocketses, good luck to him, that's a talent right there, but I only lasted five minutes. 'nuff said.
May 17, 2018: Supplements as Insurance?
Keywords: webhosting, DNS, heating/cooling, A/C, thermostat, calcium, supplements, salmon, Omega-3, aging
It has been such a long time I worked on internet domain parameters, I've forgotten how to point things at other things. Partly that's Godaddy's fault - they've written a custom interface that makes things easier, but when you move back to the standard nameserver format, you're lost. If you do it all the time, sure, but it's been years since I've pointed domains at other domains. Must say all other settings using Hostinglah's standard interface are fine - it is possible I never even pointed the spare business domains at anything, after moving away from Network Solutions. Don't know. I can ask the excellent Steven at Hostinglah, of course, but I have this tip-of-the-tongue feeling about the settings. Owell.
In the interim, it is May, and the heat is back - 86 degrees in the yard, 30 in Centipedes. Brand new heat pump (September 16 / 20, below) now has a new, external, thermostat - I have an older model thermostat that works OK, but needing a backup, I've found a new model thermostat, with external sensors, that works very well. I found during testing, last year, that these heat pumps, when in cooling mode, have a continuously running fan (in heat mode, that turns on and off, no, I don't know why either..), but they work well if you control them with an external thermostat - it takes a couple of minutes for the compressor to kick in, but I had one running in test for weeks on end, and that seems to have no detrimental effect. I am, again, very pleasantly surprised how efficient these things are, by comparison with portable heat pumps I've owned in years past. At any rate, this Inkbird controller can handle up to 13 amps, it does not have a clock, so does not need batteries, and the manufacturer has sensors other than a temperature sensor for it, like a cooking sensor and a humidity sensor. It lets you (off)set measurement values, probably good for the lobster tank too.. without a sensor plugged in, it can serve as a timer.
Increasingly, I note that there is some actual science being done on the efficacy of supplements, and increasingly, they don't turn out to do much of anything. Omega-3 is one of those things I don't see confirming scientific research for, Turmeric (curcuma) is another. The Turmeric research, reported by the BBC, was interesting in that it pointed to turmeric powder, as a cooking ingredient in Asian dishes prepared with oil, having a beneficial effect on DNA, where no other turmeric preparation did anything. While no longer term research has yet been completed, it shows up one interesting aspect of beneficial foods: turmeric root has been used as a colouring agent and as a spice in Asia for (probably) millenia. It would not be strange for Asians to have recognized beneficial effects of, say, curcuma based curries over the years, it is one of the spices on the long list of herbal medicines in India, medical agents used before modern medicine developed, some of which may well have shown experience based benefits.. I would not, though, want you to think I am one of those who think Ayurveda, Yoga, and other Asian remedies are the Holy Grail - they come from a part of the world where, until recently, the vast majority of inhabitants were peasants, and the vast majority of peasants struggled to reach age 60 - one of my staff in India once told me the reason why Westerners were held in high regard was simple: we would arrive with technology and knowledge and a work drive, many of us at at a middle age where the Indian worker, of the same age, would be elderly.
All I am saying is that it is beginning to look like we need to pay more attention to the way in which our ancestors consumed the things we know may have beneficial components. Calcium tablets are now known not to be as effective as cow's milk (we've even developed lactose tolerance to be able to drink it!). The best vehicle for Omega-3 is oily fish - I've found a supplier who sells 2 lb packs of frozen wild caught pacific keta salmon, at my local Winco for under $10, and so I have a piece, fridge-defrosted, raw, with olive oil and shallots on a fresh wholeweat roll several times a week. Nicer than the capsules, packed with essential nutrients, and very likely much more effective. Those supplements have become a kind of medical insurance for people, many of whom Google things, but don't scroll down a couple of pages, to see what other information is available that is worth looking for.
May 29, 2018: Updates don't work. Really.
Keywords: Windows 10, Windows Update, Microsoft, data security, virus scanning, FICO, credit score
In the interim, I have now run the April update on all three of my Windows 10 installs - this seriously is way too intense, especially since, as I understand it, computers with the Avast virus software installed may face problems even completing the upgrade. Yes, this is supposed to self-install, but the way Microsoft does updates, today, means that on many computers this update will not install, or not complete, and consumers who don't understand why they suddenly can no longer use their PCs are not likely to be able to complete this update without help. Not only that, some of Microsoft's own updates disable future updates - go figure - while some viruses disable updating, as well, without the user ever knowing. It is high time Microsoft understood that this method of "updating" software is no longer functional. Not only that, more than half of what Microsoft installs on your PC has nothing to do with "updating", but installs new functionality which, for the most part, is intended to collect personal data from your computer - there are at least half a dozen "apps" you can't use unless you provide your email address, and permission to use it, to Microsoft, as well as allow Microsoft to copy your files to their cloud, where they force you to permit their reading your files. All of them. Yes, you can turn that off - if you know how to run gpedit.msc under an elevated command prompt, and know where to find the policies. You know all that, right? Grandma? Whaddayamean, you didn't like it when the cops busted your front door because Microsoft reported that picture of your naked three month old grandson as kiddie porn?
Seriously, for a while I thought I was really overdoing this data security stuff, and then this amazing series of high level hacks happened, several a year, carried out by expert systems analysts capable of breaking through every firewall and protection we've ever invented. The ever increasing use of publicly available *nix and *nux operating systems in routers and firewalls have made it hugely simple for miscreants to find and track your devices and data traffic. All they have to do is break into a network interface router, analyze, at their leisure, the traffic there - nobody ever spends time looking at what goes on inside these routers - and then follow what looks a promising data track. That's simple, and that is why we get hacked, because it is so easy. Same with answering calls - I now only answer calls where I recognize the number, but I've gone one step further - most of my calls come in on a handset that does not have my contact list, so Google can't mine the Android phone for my contact information. When the call goes to voicemail, that has an email address not associated with the handset. For as long as carriers don't provide a facility where you can press a key to report a call while that call is in progress - that would be the easiest way for them to track the connection, which they could keep locked on the source switch until they release it - spoofing and phishing is going to continue, and the people that answer all calls don't help. No, hanging up does not help, you answer the call, they know your number is active. Their technology recognizes when the call goes to voicemail, which can often track the originating number, which is why they hang up so quick. Let it go to voicemail, and you have a record...
Frustratingly, my Fico score (Fair Isaac Corporation credit score) wasn't up to par, despite my best efforts, recovering from the Deed-in-Lieu I went through. Then, suddenly, my bank decides to "upgrade" the version of FICO it is using - I didn't know FICO had versions - from 8 to 9. Consequence: my FICO score jumped up, from marginally good to excellent. That should make me happy, especially since I found it frustrating my careful money management didn't really reflect in my credit score - but while it now does, I can't figure out what the banks were doing using a FICO score that clearly didn't reflect reality. The discrepancy between the two versions is just too great.. So, cool, but puzzling. I really ought to ask them. The two versions clearly cannot both be right. Then again, at least they fixed it. Trying to "standardize" all 325,719,178 Americans is bound to cause some problems.
Sorry to be cryptic, I would have loved to tell you what bank I am with, but today's hacker and tech giant environment really no longer warrant that. Letting hackers know where you bank was never a good idea, and then Google and Facebook and all those others may pull your financial data and sell them to people who come to completely wrong conclusions. Today, you're best off having an absolute minimum of accessible data on the internet - I am very firmly convinced that if you inadvertently post two pictures of you outside a Citibank branch, someone is going to jump to the conclusion you bank there, even if you're with Chase. That's getting crazy, but very true, you have absolutely no control over what data goes where, and what algorithm then jumps to conclusions that are never checked by anyone. I know this from my Facebook data file, which has me very active in PS2 gaming forums, in the past - gaming is something I have never done, so where do they get that from? I've never even looked at a PS2, let alone owned one... or any gaming device, nor have I ever attended gaming forums. I've attended one Xbox developer seminar in my entire life, and that was because a researcher invited me, I was living in Microsoft's hometown at the time.
June 4, 2018: Steamed lobster, and the Blackberry Priv.
Keywords: lobster, pressure cooker, steaming, freezing, encryption, Bitlocker, TPM, Blackberry Priv, Android, refurbished
You'll be pleased to hear I have figured out how to (hopefully) humanely kill lobsters, then, later, defrost them and steam them in the pressure cooker. As you may know, the standard way of executing a lobster is by live immersion in boiling water, a process, I understand, lobsters aren't altogether happy with, so I decided to try and vacuum pack two live lobsters, and stick the resulting packages directly in the freezer. As far as I know, deep cooling a live animal (insects, fish, mammals) causes quick loss of consciousness, as the brain progressively shuts down bits not necessary for survival. And in a number of articles, the advice is given to "numb the lobster" by putting it in the freezer. That gave me reason to think that if you put the lobster in the freezer, and leave it there, it should go from "numb" to "dead" in short order, right? The vacuum packing helps to immobilize the critter, snd draw out remaining water. After all, if lobsters don't have a central nervous system or a "brain" as such, so cutting them through the head isn't a good way of killing them. So I figured freezing was best, and as you can see in the pressure cooker just after I opened it, the lobster, defrosted in the fridge for 24 hours, boiled up just fine, it does not have to be boiled alive. Cooking time was experimental - two minutes on high pressure, but rather than cooling the pot, as some cooking writers recommend, I just turned off the (induction) heat, and let it sit until the pressure sensor came down (9 minutes). Meat nice and white, and any remaining moisture (this was more steam than boil) evaporated while it cooled down. I think we're good.
The discussion about whether lobsters (and other edible critters) feel pain is interesting. You see, we don't really know what pain is - it is not an emotion, it is a warning mechanism that something is seriously wrong, it gets you to look for an improvement with regard to whatever is wrong. From that perspective, then, the lobster, attempting to escape from a pot with boiling water, does feel pain, no need for the semantics. Stunning it, as is routinely done with slaughter animals today, as I have attempted to do, is then probably the most humane way to prepare a lobster for the kill, in whatever way you do that. As soon as I have my own apartment again I'll try and do some experiments, along the above lines....
Shows ya. I tested the Bitlocker install on the two older PCs I have that run Windows 10 Pro, all went well, and eventually got to where I had the HP Elitebook 2570P all ready to convert, with a new hybrid hard disk, and an activated TPM, the Trusted Platform Module that provides motherboard level security so the drive is locked to the laptop, can't be read or used unless physically installed in the one laptop - unless you have the encryption key created while Bitlocker runs. Well, maybe not... Yes, the install worked, the encryption worked, I was able to boot and run the operating system - except, somehow, memory errors began to occur. My ATSC TV dongle would no longer load its drivers, and any attempt at playing back HD broadcast TV recordings resulted in the Blue Screen Of Death.
I have no clue what causes this, but was thankfully able to back Bitlocker out completely, then bring Windows back to a restore point just before the conversion - the reset took hours. All is well, I am just terminally puzzled what didn't work - not that I have done the research I should, but then Bitlocker is something I wanted to install out of curiousity, not because I need it. There are rather a lot of levels of security in these business notebooks, I am not surprised something doesn't work right if you stack them all on top of each other. The plethora of security tools in business notebooks is meant to help IT departments implement the particular security scheme for their organization, and that usually is a choice of tools, not a stack. Even without Bitlocker, setting a drivelock password will make the drive inaccessible once removed from the system, and that really was my primary concern, as that is where my financial data lives. If you've been "computerized" for as long as me, you have whole decades of your life exclusively on disk, and I have worked diligently on protecting the data as much as I can, even to the point my computer room has a surveillance camera streaming video to a cloud overseas when I am not home. It isn't that I need that much protection, but as a researcher I just like to try and make things work, things I have particular expertise in.
While I am doing my level best not to spend an unnecessary penny, I do at some point need to replace my aging Blackberry Z10, which I successfully repaired, a while ago, I even replaced the rear facing camera ($6.95 on Ebay), better than ever now, the picture to the right was taken with it. But the Blackberry OS really is a thing of the past. I am not desperate to run dozens of apps on my mobile devices, but there are some things I need, and in today's "devices" some service providers, like banks, actually use a level of security that expects you to use their apps. There is some functionality they do not make available on PC, like cheque scanning, and older operating system, like Blackberry's OS-10, and Microsoft's Lumia, are not well served any more. Found a refurbished Blackberry Priv on Amazon, the Priv is the first (and likely last) high end Blackberry that natively runs Android, so I thought I would give that a try - annoying Queens, NY, vendor delivered late and insists on a delivery signature, inconvenient to the point I almost didn't get it, but the unit, which I ended up collecting from a FedEx depot, is in pristine shape (that's a slide-under keyboard in a very sturdy metal casing you see in the picture). I've not yet fired it up, but it looks like I even have an unused nano-SIM, which my carrier says they'll activate OTA, so we'll see if Blackberry did something to Android that makes it more palatable than the pure Google version. Getting one ($180 where it originally cost $699, and this handset looks new, unused, one can get lucky with "refurbished") is the only way to find out. More later..
June 7, 2018: More Blackberry Priv, a.k.a. Androidery.
Keywords: Blackberry Priv, Android, refurbished, Amazon, T-Mobile, Google, Android 6.0.1., Marshmallow
Anyway, having just tested internet tethering on this handset, and finding the WiFi network connection running at 300 Mbps, I am a convert. Running speedtest from a connected laptop I end up clearly faster than the basic FIOS fiber connection I have at home, pretty amazing, that is the power of 4GLTE. The rest of the Priv - still wading through the settings - is pretty powerful and complete, I've spent much of my time turning off the plethora of Google apps, that serve little purpose other than to collect data. Shot some pictures, and open them in Google Photo? That moves them, instantaneously, to Google's Cloud, where they are immediately read and analyzed, it isn't legal for them to do that on your phone. In my other Android, there is a File Manager, so I could shoot files from the SD card to my laptop, but Google have done away with that, as well, now - this forces you to use Photo or Gallery, both of which instantaneously copy your pictures and videos to Google's cloud. I am able to connect the Priv using a USB port, and suck 'em off that way, but elegant it is not. Owell.
But it's got everything, 5.4 inch high resolution screen, HD camera, it is spiffy, plenty of RAM, and Blackberry moved contacts and calendar and stuff seamlessly from the Z10 to the Priv. I just need to turn off the Gmail app, and use the Blackberry Hub instead. We'll see. I've ordered an induction charger and a Blackberry holster, so it'll (almost) be like nothing changed. I am still finding my way around Android (the Priv updated itself to Android 6.0.1., a.k.a. Marshmallow once I began setting it up), which, though I own several Android handsets, I had never used on a daily basis. I do enjoy the Blackberry productivity tools, having gotten used to those over the decades, and Blackberry's transfer tool brought my databases over from the Z10 pretty much without a hiccup, and without my having to use anybody's cloud - just my WiFi network did the trick. The nice aspect of this is that I don't necessarily have to store stuff in Google's Android cloud. I disable most of their apps, you don't need to have Google Maps on your phone to use mapping, nor do you need the Google Voice app to use Google voice. Etc. Call me paranoid, but I like to have some control where my data goes, and I like to use other people's software and hardware - I especially don't want to "Google" my laptops. Blackberry, I am pleased to see, is still allowing the manufacture of new Blackberry smartphones, and that means I'll be able to continue using their productivity tools, which have more of a business flavour than Google and Apple do, their focus is on making sure you stay in touch with Grandma and Grandkids, gotta tell you, I see some people contort themselves so they can force their children to interact with them all the time, I avoided that rattrap many years ago, when I decided to go live places where the family didn't, and then divined a vasectomy would give me more control of my life. But that's a different subject.
For me, personally, another T-Mobile handset (the refurb Priv is available for multiple carriers, from Amazon and Ebay and likely others) lets me use T-Mobile's WiFi calling - not that vital as I have unlimited minutes, but when traveling overseas you can make calls to the United States with it, still charged as a local US-based call, as far as I know, local, as the call is made not from the country you're in, but via the internet, from Snoqualmie, WA, where the head end is. And T-Mobile does well on the tethering and hotspot front, where especially the hotspot, using dual band 802.ac WiFi, is blisteringly fast (mind what kind of allowance your account has, though). I don't use it often, but during outages, and while traveling, carrying your own fast router is a Godsend, and the Priv is much faster than the Z10, which is no slouch - 300 Mbps versus 75. And having the slide-out keyboard (picture below) is convenient, though a full function screen touch keyboard is provided. I tell you, at the price (I balk at shelling out $700 or more for a cellphone) this unit is state-of-the-art and very user friendly. My only criticism, though it really isn't wrong, is that the screen is hi-res to the point that pages in smaller fonts are hard to read, as the handset renders very small type as if you've got the eyes of a twelve year old. So if you're in bifocal age, expect to spend time zooming..
I have to tell you that, indeed, Google has made Android much more secure, and provides lots of different ways to prevent apps you install from breaking your phone and your privacy, but it takes a huge effort to find all of the settings, tweaks and protective measures you can take. Even if you do, in order to prevent apps running in the background - this is when you quit an application and it then disappears, but continues to run - you need to switch the entire Android operating system into "developer mode", which requires several obscure steps that you can only find in obscure internet forums. It works, but I like to think few people turn that on, especially since it doesn't show in any menu until after you actually do.
June 11, 2018: Just playing with my new toy.
Keywords: Blackberry Priv, Android, ABC news, live streaming, BBC iPlayer, NooQee, wireless charging
Yes, that is a bowl of spicy beef pho, I often forget to walk around the corner from the downtown Seattle clinic I go to for checkups, and pick up Pho to take home for lunch or dinner. Today I remembered, and it did not disappoint - enough for two meals, and five alarm, too. But the picture is here because I am still trying out the new Blackberry Priv, with its 18 megapixel Schneider Kreuznach camera. This is a compressed JPEG, so you won't see the full resolution, but even this shows it is pretty good. HD video too, although I need a faster (cat 10) SD card to fully utilize that. With the card I have, I can do 1280x720 at 30 frames per second - actually, in terms of file size, that's oompf aplenty. Anyway, I love the Priv - if you don't need to keep up with the Joneses, you can still sit in the front row for a reasonable amount of money. Battery life is good, it makes a terrific alarm clock - one of the must-have features for any cellphone for me - and as of this weekend, when the induction charger and holster get here, I'll be super happy.
So, yes, at least I can now watch ABC News' broadcast, (East Coast) live at their website. That's major, I really don't want to have to sit here glued to my ATSC dongle, I suppose I could record a broadcast on the other laptop, just in case I miss the "World News". I have always thought it strange that, in the USA, the main newscast is a half hour, sometime early evening, the rest of the copious newstime taken up by the locals reporting on lost dogs and phonescammed grandmas. It is likely my own fault, I've really never been a proper local anywhere, well, maybe Amsterdam, I must make sure I "local" myself, once I move to Seattle. If you live in places you know you will not stay forever you don't have that urge to "connect".
It has taken a long time, but the networks are finally streaming to the internet in HD - not only that, ABC has managed to do a "normal" broadcast, with ads, which was the problem, for a long time. I hadn't looked at this stuff for quite a while - I use international "intelligent DNS" servers, and many organizations did not like that. It is a bit like VPN - you can get to sites that would block U.S. access, and your own provider can only get limited information about your surfing. It isn't that I do prohibited things, I just value my privacy, and having control over my networking. And no, it is not illegal to access the BBC iPlayer without paying the TV license fee - UK law is not valid outside the UK, and you cannot pay the license fee if you don't have an address in the UK. I checked, there is no way. These people are doing themselves out of so much money...
The wireless NooQee charger in the picture to the right works, is really all I can say. I had no real need for one of these, or so I thought - I did buy one for a friend last year, but then I got the Blackberry Priv. There was a charging stand for the Priv on Amazon, that was inexpensive, but there was a shipping charge. And as it turned out, this NooQee was more expensive, but shipped for free, if I bought enough stuff in one order. As it turned out, I needed some other things, so now I have this "NooQee" - I don't know if anybody has explained to the Chinese what that means, in popular speak... I have had a charging stand for every Blackberry I've ever owned - you have to charge them anyway, and they make great alarm clocks, especially in a stand by the bed. Blackberrys always went into "sleep" mode when you put them in the stand and activated the alarm clock, complete with auto-dimming of the screen. So let's see. It isn't environmentally good, though, it consumes 2 amps for 1 amp power delivery, where you really only need 500 milliamps to charge a phone. Having said that, the battery in the Pri si not removable, so a stand capable of fast chrging may not be a luxury. I've now got two phones with fixed batteries - it is likely the plethora of aftermarket batteries, some of which probably put your phone at risk of catching fire or exploding, that are doing away with the replacable battery. The battery in my Blü is massive, could last days, I think the Priv has a slightly less powerful one, to keep it slim. Let you know how long it lasts... But this stand is cool, I have it running, for now, on a 1 amp power supply, and as the phone fell over, propped up as it was, the past couple of nights, a stand is a good idea. Not having to use the USB socket is probably helpful, too. Right?
June 15, 2018: New discoveries, and brain agility.
Keywords: Blackberry Priv, Android, ez Share, webserver card, Nikon D90, nearsighted, children's vision, memory, long numbers, dementia, phone unlock
I had been looking at those SD (memory) cards that purport to provide WiFi access to your pictures for a while, mostly because I found it hard to believe an SD adapter could contain a WiFi host. Guess what - not only do these things contain a functional WiFi host router, they also have a webserver built in, as well as enough processing power to build a TAR archive. I am gobsmacked. I bought the ez Share device for under $20, it comes without the memory card, so I inserted a 32GB micro-SD card, set the timeouts on my Nikon to long, unformatted the card (which would trigger the camera to re-format, if it could see adapter and card), stuck the whole shebang in the Nikon, it recognized the card, I formatted and took some pictures, parked the camera next to my laptop, and three minutes later I was looking at, and downloading, the shot I had just taken. Amazing. Best to disconnect from your internet, for the duration, then connect to the card's "hotspot", and a browser window will open automagically (pic to the right shows you the server view from the adapter on my D90 - not only does the card recognize standard picture formats, it can also "see" raw image formats, like Nikon's NEF). I mean, easy as pie. No more USB connection, and you can use the camera you have. Donald Trump should look at this, and learn why slagging off the Chinese is maybe not smart. While we build megamillion dollar medical devices, they create really advanced small stuff that actually works every time...
My D-90 had lost some of the sharpness in its imaging, and I blamed that to the time I dropped the camera body, a couple of years ago. So imagine my surprise, after I reprogrammed the CPU to accomodate the adapter card. You have to set the timeouts in the camera to as long a time as you can manage, and that gets done in different places. That done I made some other changes, as I went through the settings, including setting the ASA value to "auto", where I had always had a value I was used to in 35mm days. Whether it is the sensitivity, or something else I did, I don't know, but the camera is back to razor sharp, with both my zoom lenses. Can't think what it was I did, but that makes me happy. I am not posting a picture here, because you can only really tell when looking at a full size (4310x2868 @ 12MB) shot - bit big on a webpage.
I am following, with some bemusement, an ongoing discussion in The Netherlands about the increase in nearsightedness in children, blamed (by prestigious medical scientists) on digital devices. Followed by endless discussions about how to make (read: force) children to "play outside", which apparently is the only solution to cure their vision "problem". I gotta tell you, these folks are deluded. Important is to figure out what change is in progress, and how, and then find a solution - but that is not "don't do it", or "limit their screen time". Apparently, nobody has talked to the kids involved. Or read up about when exactly humankind left the savannah, and why. Don't get me wrong, I don't deny the problem, but I do know that going backwards, and using force, is not a solution. When I was a kid we were taught to be right-handed by being rapped on the knuckles, and forced - at home and in school - to write with the right hand. We know, today, there is no rationale for this. For forcing anyone young to do anything that does not come natural, one needs a very good reason. The principle must be that the child must be given options, then left to decide its own preference. We need to stop thinking we know things. That's not how you discover.
One of the things you need to be mindful of, in terms of health maintenance, is the mind. Previous generations, to the best of my knowledge, didn't much work on maintenance of the brain, but this is slowly changing - although I doubt very much this is being addressed where it should, among folks in their twenties and thirties, when they can still "learn to learn". Ending up in science and technology, and the development of the computer environment, I expect I was simply lucky, always having to "wrack the brains" for work. The reason I am bringing this up is that recently, I decided to use an old 18 digit security key, one I had not used for years, and one that I always felt was too long to remember. This key is in one of my WiFi routers, one of those keys you set, and then the systems remember it for you, you just have to make sure you can find it in your database, if you can't get into the router to read it there.
Surprise, surprise: this key is still glued in my brain. I could use it for a password, I remember it by rote even though I never used it on a daily, or even weekly, basis, and as I said, I've not used this key for years - like two, or three. Alpha-numeric, too. I am reasonably good at remembering passwords, I use maybe ten, alternatingly, but this really is a bit "over", if you follow my drift. I do not, at this point, even know if I am remembering this code as a number, or if it is simply a sort of object, whose "shape" would be determined by the "proper" sequence of numbers and letters. Yes, so I can remember things that are hard to remember, but is that proof of mental agility? If there were tests you learned for this when young, I'd have something to go on, but there weren't, so we're pretty much on our own - I remember that last cognition test I took, when the psychologist tested me on my knowledge of past U.S. presidents - for a non-voter who isn't a U.S. citizen, that may not work, and the result has no bearing on someone's memory, if you have not established they should remember this.
Briefly back to the Blackberry Priv, that seems to be working swimmingly, I am almost tempted to buy a spare. But I won't, because Blackberry just announced yet another new handset, so by the time I need to replace this, there probably will be refurbished versions of that. I can't afford to have phones lying around doing nothing - besides, I have plenty of those, older handsets, I can always fall back on the Z10, temporarily. In the interim, T-Mobile just told me they'll unlock this Priv - one reason these refurbished Privs are cheaper than others, is that they are locked to T-Mobile - and without an existing TMO account with some history, they're not going to send you an unlock code.
June 22, 2018: A week of troubleshooting and fixin's
Keywords: Blü, Dodge Durango, Open MRI, A/C, freon, Android, phone update
My Blü Studio XL2 6" phone sprung a leak, that is to say, there was an Android update sent out by Blü, and that would not install. I managed to figure out how to run diagnostics - not an Android expert - and you can see the result in the pic to the right. When I couldn't find a fix that worked online, I went to Blü's website, which actually has the capability for you to generate a trouble ticket, and a couple of days later I got a response that made no sense to me. As one of the emails had a customer service number to call, I tried that, and much to my amazement - this is a cheap phone, and refurbished to boot - that got answered after five seconds. I followed their instructions, got nowhere, called again - and "Marie" added one step to my instructions, and had me up and up-dated in five more minutes. So if you want or need an affordable unlocked two line phone with large screen and many of the trimmings - it is not a Blackberry Priv or a Samsung Galifrey, but then, at a third of the price, doesn't have to be - getting a Blü is not a bad idea. You'll find them on Amazon and Ebay, and refurbished phones, at least mine, from an Ebay vendor calld Bree, are a steal, and "like new".
Medical facilities generally don't keep you waiting forever, you go for a blood draw and there is a crowded waiting room, you make allowance. But CDI today, made a dog's dinner of it - half hour drive, I got there early, since there always is paperwork - I hadn't been to their Kirkland facility, which has an Open MRI machine, for years - then waited for fourty minutes, half an hour beyond my appointment time. Nobody told me of any delays, there was nobody - 0 - in the waiting area, the last person there had left fourty minutes earlier, and when I asked what the holdup was the receptionist didn't pick up the phone, but went into the facility. Five minutes later, she came back and told me "less than ten minutes now", without any explanation or apology. So, ten minutes later, I left - I don't see why I should give these folks my insurance money if they can't be civil or helpful. I hate doing that, you don't make friends this way, but on the other hand there is so much medical competition in the Seattle area I see no reason why they can't treat me as the paying existing customer I am. Apart from anything else, this isn't an appropriate way to treat a known cancer patient. Gotta make some calls Monday..
When summer starts, I usually double check the charge in the A/C system in my Durango, mostly because a kind mechanic replaced the compressor with a rebuilt version, a few years back, and I assume that that could have resulted in leakage - he did not depressurize the system, prior to the repair, Google tells me that should have been done. And since then, after a recharge using those cans of refrigerant you can buy at O'Reilly's, performance has been anemic. I intermittently use those cans that include compressor lubricant and leak indicator, and those that just have refrigerant. So while I topped up the A/C system every year, this year I added a bit more pressure than I normally do (in the shot to the left, the can of refrigerant, blue, and the charge adapter, blue, are at the far left, clicking on the picture will show you a larger version). Having read through the Dodge forums, I was cognizant it is easy to over-pressurize the system, so I have erred on the side of caution, so to speak. The way this works is to some extent dependent on the ambient temperature, as that is what determines the point at which the compressor engages, and as it wasn't blisteringly hot, the pressure was fairly low, and I kept adding regrigerant. At some point, the compressor began to cycle more or less of its own volition, and I assumed I had reached max - as it cycled, the gauge repeatedly flipped into the red zone, and then came back to green. I thought I might have overdone it, but guess what: the A/C, for the first time since the compressor was replaced, is running perfectly. Today, with temperatures in the 'eighties, the SUV is cool inside, front to back, in ten minutes or so. Brilliant. So: don't be too cautious.. My guess is that I've finally put enough refrigerant in, and that I may have added too much lubricant, over time, which has now finally distributed itself throughout the system, which, because the SUV is large, has separate-but-connected back-and-front systems, with separate heat exchangers, one of which is all the way in the back. I think.
June 29, 2018: Restoring Windows 10? Fuggedaboutit
Keywords: Blü, MasterLock, Android, Blackberry Priv, VOIP, Windows, image copy, Microsoft, AIS Backup
Not too long ago I bumped something into the keypad of my safe, when said keypad came off a bit wobbly, I took the locking unit apart. Of course, something in the bezel broke - I've had the thing since 2007 - leaving me worried the lock might stop working altogether. So I looked for the manufacturer, luckily still extant, sent pictures of the offending part, and this morning an entire new keypad with electronics arrived - for the paltry sum of $27 and change, including tax. Took a while to install, the cringe moment that you are going to test if it works - if not, you might not be able to open the safe without The Professionals - and all's well that ends well. That's the old bezel, at the left. I can't vouch for all of Masterlock's products, but anybody who can deliver a replacement part for a fire safe, cheaply, eleven years later, has my blessing.
While I quite happy with my Blackberry Priv, it takes some getting used to. One app, Telz, a VOIP app I am using on my other Android device, won't "run right" on the Priv - it keeps hanging up on conversations, even when, on the Blü, it is rock solid. And the wireless charger I bought, recently, keeps overheating the Priv. Admittedly, this began when I tried to charge overnight, while running an alarm clock display - Blackberry forums have it charging wirelessly while running apps, even inadvertently, can cause this. So I am trying to figure out what is running that should not, that kind of stuff. In the interim, my old Blackberry Z10 has been pressed back into service as alarm clock - still the best display driver for that purpose of any phone I've even owned. It doesn't need a SIM card to do this, so that's cool. Saves the environment.
AIS Backup, the English backup software I have been using for years, ever since they gave me a couple of licenses when I helped them troubleshoot Iomega Bernouilli drives (remember those?), is still going strong. I like the fact that it creates zip archives - in emergencies, you can get files without the software - and I mainly use it as a secondary backup tool, should my primary (Windows image backup) fail. Which, in the past couple of days, it did. Spectacularly.
In order to help prevent you from giving a copy of Windows to your cousin Joey, Microplod have built lots of restrictions into the image backup, one of which is that it won't let you restore to a system with a different configuration. This now leads to it even failing on a restore on the same machine - I had seen some examples of it not wanting to activate on a different disk, but this time, it restored to completion, and then, when done, came back with an error, which indicated it sitting on a different architecture, and failed. Since I restored a backup to the same machine it came from, after I had a file system mishap, this was complete codswollop, same Windows, same disk, same motherboard, same network, yada yada. I will not use Microsoft's backup tools again, this especially since they really want you to use their cloud tools, which lets them parse your files. Nono.
But there is always AIS Backup, my secondary "copy machine", so I am now in process of restoring that backup. Which, started from Windows, initially failed, too, with memory errors. This was getting worse (I am trying to recover my "main machine" here!). But then I went through the setup again, and noticed in one of the dialogs that AIS recommended an operating system "overwrite" to be run from the bootable Linux shim they make available. I've never used that, as I back up to network devices, mounted using NFS, and when you boot from an AIS USB load Windows' networking isn't loaded.
So then I decided to have a look anyway, since Linux and its Daddy UNIX have networking built into their shim, although I did not think this would be that sophisticated. Guess what - boot the laptop from the Linux utility load, and AIS Backup will find and mount things as native NFS out the wired Ethernet port. It'll mount the backup, and start restoring, without any Windows in sight. Mabe I should spend more time experimenting and reading manuals. Honestly. I didn't know this, and I have used AIS way over a decade. And amazing it is - I had previously, just to try it out, run a test with AIS, in having it back up to a remote server (as in, 8,000 miles away) using the ftp protocol, both using my fiber connection, and my 4GLTE host protocol, and that worked well too. The "overwrite" restore did not work, so I have now wiped (using DISKPART) the drive again, and am trying to do a full restore that way. Fingers crossed.
July 12, 2018: No more drone flying in Seattle
Keywords: Windows, image copy, Microsoft, Windows 8.1, HP Elitebook, prednisone, drones, hexacopter, authentication, Amazon security
Great. I bought a camera drone, a while back, that never even left the box, and now that I am trying to find some things to do that keep me occupied while saving money, I find there is hardly anywhere you're allowed to fly drones any more. Never having flown one, I just want to be able to go somewhere I can teach myself. Maybe I'll just call the State Police, see if they have an idea how far out I need to go to legally fly. Seattle and the counties surrounding it all prohibit drones. Understandable, though.
In the interim, a change in medication seems to have done me good, in terms of reducing my lower back complaints. The bad news is that I have progressed from NSAIDs to steroids, not an ideal medication. Having said that, I am managing on a low dosage, so we'll see how that goes. The last time I was on semi-permanent steroids was before they invented biologics, I was still living in Westchester County, NY, working in Manhattan, before even starting my D.C. assignments. Fingers crossed.
Increasingly, Amazon wants two factor authentication when "something about your login changes". As nothing does, and no other providers of internet trade or services signal anything untoward (and they scan, believe you me), the cause has to be the way Amazon attempts to query your browser for their data collection. I've tweeted complaints on a number of occasions, but Amazon then wants me to call in, which is really not necessary, as they can see from my Twitter handle who I am, and track back from there. Any third rate network engineer can do that, I've been on the interweb for a while, and their customer for a while. Well, yes, say the Amazon support folks, but "we have no access to that type of customer information". What that means is that the support folks can't help with system issues, they can only gather data and pass that on to folks you don't get to speak to. But: from a privacy and security perspective, I don't provide network and system data to anyone. It is just not safe. Note that Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Verizon all try to ensure security by forcing you to always log in from one device on one network with one software package. That way they can "assist in your safe browsing". The thing is, that's bullshit. Always using the same network, device, browser, app, makes you a sitting duck for cybercrime and hackers. For your own safety, switch browsers and devices and networks and use VPNs as much as you can, so providers will learn to stop enforcing this fake security. Pretending you have AI by checking for someone's IP address is blistering nonsense.
Painfully, I can't get my Windows 8.1 laptop to back up any more - using the Windows System Image tool, that is. As I had problems with my Windows 10 laptop image recovery as well, this has to have been something I did. I think I am about to start on a painful reinstall, if I can find my license keys. Might be interesting, on a laptop that was not designed for UEFI but has an update UEFI BIOS. Owell. I can always do it twice...
July 18, 2018: And the heat is on..
Keywords: Windows 8.1, HP Elitebook, UEFI, GPT, A/C, refrigerant, Dodge, Edgestar, Blackberry, Priv, Class 10 SD
So yes, I did a full re-install of the Windows 8.1 Pro laptop - that's the last version of Windows that will still run the Windows Media Center as an integrated "app". And much to my surprise, a "bare bones" reinstall, this time with a full UEFI implementation, makes the almost venerable HP Elitebook 2560p fly like a fish. I swear.
That version of Windows does not allow you to create a recovery DVD, but thankfully I still had a 2015 ISO image in the archives, and was able to create a UEFI compliant install disk from that. Buy refurbished HP business equipment, and you get service for life, don't you know. Having said all that, I was surprised to see that a completely clean install of 64 bit Windows 8.1 gets that operating system running much better than keeping on patching the existing install. I had converted the laptop to a UEFI BIOS, but I don't know that it ever really booted under UEFI, a technology I am not necessarily familiar with. Just like I discovered with Windows 10, on another laptop, though, a reinstall can be made to run in full UEFI mode. In this case, what it took is burning a Windows 8.1 install disk from an ISO file on a UEFI machine - that created a UEFI compliant boot DVD, and as the laptop's BIOS had been fully updated (this is vital), doing that install on a "bare" hard disk - one that had all of its information and formatting removed using DISKPART - caused the drive to be formatted in GPT mode - necessary for UEFI boot - and then install an EFI boot partition. Job done. Converting a "regular" disk to GPT and UEFI is hard and risky, and this reinstall was simple, although getting it all set up the way I had it took a couple of days, completely with intermittent backups and Microsoft Updates - all 170(!) of them.
I did overcharge the A/C in my Dodge (June 22, below) - ambient temperature was still in the 70's, in June, it is in the 90's now, and sure enough, the system had overpressure, kept cycling continuously. IOW, you are best off checking and recharging your A/C during high summer. I had never checked how to bleed pressure off an automotive A/C system, but one thing the website warned about was the effect of R-134a refrigerant on the skin and your breathing. For safety's sake, I wrapped the low pressure valve in an old towel - just as well, but with the excess refrigerant - ice cold - came a ton of fluorescent dye - one of the cans I bought had a mix of leak indicator/sealer, as well as lubricant and refrigerant. I expect I used too much of that mix - I later switched to refrigerant-only - because the towel now looks largely fluorescent, but the A/C worked just fine, this morning. In a week or so, I'll re-test the pressure, but as you can see, the current pressure is a little over 45 psi at an ambient temperature of around 85 degrees, this measured with a hot engine, and the A/C at cold / recirculate / highest fan speed. Hopefully, the overcharge did not do any damage - I saw some leakage from the engine I could not explain, hopefully the system drained off the over pressure, had it blown an A/C seal I guess there'd been more leakage, and it would not have worked well today at all. One hopes.
What with the housemates gone for the weekend, I had an opportunity to test the capability of my two "portable" heat pumps. While I had done that last year, when I bought the second, that was in late September, still warm, but on the cusp of autumn. As the forecast had the temperature in the nineties, this week, with high summer, that gave me an opportunity to check that these two 14 ton "portables" really have the capacity to cool (and therefore heat) an entire small house. If they do that, they'll do just fine in an apartment, with "juice to spare". And indeed, they managed to keep the house at a nice, comfortable, 76 Fahrenheit, some 25 centigrade. I am honestly amazed at the efficiency of these units, all it needs for cooling use is just an external thermostat, or else the fan runs continuously. In heating mode, the fan does turn off, I guess they never figured out how to program that. The evaporation mechanism (heat pumps produce condensation, which these dual hose units blow out the compressor exhaust) works well - interestingly, that means that, in heating mode, the unit initially switches on in cooling mode, blows out the condensate, then switches to heating mode, which generates more condensate. But it works, had me confused, though, initially.
My Blackberry Priv (June 4 and subsequent entries, below) turns out to have really high resolution video recording. As in, 4K at 30fps, or 1080p at 60fps. I need to do some more testing, but an initial low light recording came out a bit amazing. Mind you, a minute-and-a-half recording takes up 30 megabytes, which would translate to 1.2 GB per hour. The reason I didn't realize is that I had no class 10 micro-SD cards, just stuck in any old card, and the Priv then warned me I could only get 720p. I initially though that was fine, then thought I ought to at least try, so ordered a couple of Class 10 cards, and off she went. At high resolution there is no shake control, so I am not sure how that will be useful. Having said that, I had not anticipated that the highest resolution video camera I'd have was a cellphone. Sumtin' else. The picture to the right, FWIW, is a screen capture of a bit of 4K (3840x2160) video, shot with the Priv, when recharging the A/C on the Dodge. Never done that before (except from HDTV, when that was the only stills I could get).
The Priv has a Schneider Kreuznach lens set, with 18 megapixel picture element, which does deliver pretty stunning imagery. At which point I realized that my old adage, always shoot at the highest resolution as you never know when you need that, is going to cost me - in terms of memory and storage space. Thankfully I was used to calculating storage needs based on my Nikon SLR's capabilities, but I can slowly start to double that up. I had been thinking about getting a larger NAS drive once I move, 9GB (out of 12) RAID5, but now I will have to, complete that with a 10GB backup drive, and then put my "old" NAS drives on Ebay. The problem with copious storage is always that you need to back it up, and that can be a problem. The cloud is all very nice, but just the idea of restoring 2 or 3 TB to a PC over the internet is a bit problematical. Apart from which, I really do not think I want my long term archives, which include sensitive stuff, where internet companies can parse them.
July 23, 2018: Should politicians get educatered?
Keywords: Medicalert, charities, medical bracelets, Brexit, EU, European Union, delegating, management, Theresa May, United Kingdom
Since 2007, I have had a subscription to Medicalert, one of those outfits that maintain your medical information in their database, with a pendant you wear that medical personnel can use to connect with their organization. Problem was, they kept turning on auto-renewal (this is a violation of FTC regulations, can only be done with your approval), and have no facility at their website to turn that off. Worse, they now have a clause that when you renew, you automatically agree to auto-renewal - again, against the law, and on top of that they give no information about their business license and their charitable registration. They don't even tell you when you ask. Add to that their inability to provide the clear medical printout they used to - entire sections are now invisible, and detail, such as "date of onset", that used to be available, is gone - and I can only assume this is no longer a bona fide organization (if it ever was). So I found myself another provider - what with all of the hacking going on I don't know it is safe to tell you who - and no longer will contribute to the growing coffers of Medicalert. The one time I did end up in an emergency room, ER staff and physicians mistook my silver pendant for jewellery, took it off when they sedated me for surgery - as they do in every hospital on the planet, as jewellery gets stolen - and ignored it.
Should have probably ditched the subscription then, in hindsight. At this point Medicalert seems to have as its only purpose to make money, and there are no statistics of any kind that show this system's effectiveness. If Medicalert bracelets and pendants had saved 24,165 lives, last year, I promise you that would be all over their website - but not a word. And look at the picture to the left - not sure why it took me so long to realize, but if you're going to wear a medical bracelet, forget about the fancy silver or gold jewellery. In an emergency situation, nobody is going to check your jewellery, or - another famous example - your mobile phone, just in case. They'll look in your wallet or purse for identification, while they figure out what they need to do to stabilize you. If something obvious occurs - a friend, or this very visible red pendant - they'll use the information. They can't assume - think! - that if you put on your bracelet you have O Positive blood, that you actually do. So they'll test anyway. In my case, nobody bothered with my medical data until after I was out of the ER, and in a bed in intensive care, with hoses and drips and pumps and stuff, and alive. Simple as that, peeps. If you think I am full of it, here is a blogging cardiologist's view of these things.
It is slowly vitally important the population of the British Isles understand nobody but them really cares about, worries about, Brexit. Read European papers in their native languages, something many Britons in Britain aren't capable of, and you'll find few articles and reports about Brexit. Go into European stores, from supermarkets to auto dealerships, and you'll find few products that come from Britain. Jaguar, Vauxhall, Mini, HP Sauce, baked beans, list archetypal British products and you will find they're foreign owned, foreign manufactured, or both. The other day I found a beautiful 3 lb Angus roast at Safeway, cut it up and froze it, using that as steaks. Australian, shipped to and sold in America, see pic to the right.. This is what the Brits won't see, you can get quality products from anywhere, there is this glut of freight transportation, worldwide, and if the British stuff gets too expensive we can get Marmite from New Zealand, for lower prices.
Britain is 93,600 square miles in size, and has 66 million inhabitants. It is trying to impose its divorce terms on a Europe that, post-Brexit, will be 1,634,499 square miles in size (17.5 times the size), with 444 million inhabitants (6.7 times the people, which means they have three times the space per person, too). IOW, this is David and Goliath. The British do not understand you cannot move something that size by pushing. I see the breathless BBC reporters reporting on "the negotations" from Brussels, and their viewers have no idea no German, French, Slovenian, Danish, what have you, reporters breathlessly file reports about Brexit to their home fronts from Brussels. About agriculture, medical benefits, open borders, terrorism, sure, but not Brexit. There used to be an Anglo-Saxon worldwide old boy network of these really advanced English speaking countries - but that was then, and today Australia has defence agreements with the USA, and trade agreements with China, and little Korea makes more cars and smartphones than almost everybody. The Americans need the Australians (a.k.a. the "white Asians"), and the Chinese need oil and coal and minerals, none of which Theresa May has to sell.
it is perhaps not all that surprising Britain decided to Brexit - they were underwhelmed by the Euro to begin with, which wasn't a good way to start. They're not team players, not in the sense that they'll take orders when some flexibility is warranted, and having seen the ridicolous fervour the Germans, in particular, applied to the so-called "migrants", it was perhaps not that surprising the British decided to put a stop to a process they were not getting a say in. It is a sea change - look at the new right wing governments in Hungary, Austria, Italy and other "border" countries, and the way in which they seek to stop the migration, and it will be clear political leanings all over Europe - not to mention the United States - have changed significantly. Something that is very clear is that the politicians who make up governments, more often than not, have no management training. Theresa May is a point in fact - she appears to have difficulty delegating the tasks of government. Brexit negotations should be handled by the relevant minister, with a team of experts, but instead, the prime minister flies back and forth to Brussels to have dinner with senior EU officials - a spectacularly ineffective way of managing a transition, and quite possibly counter-productive. I know from experience how difficult delegating is, it makes you very insecure, as you're not in the driver's seat when you brief somebody and let them have at it, but that is the way you find out if you picked the right person for the job, and what their strengths are. That's management - the other thing is called insecurity. Thinking "you know best" means you're not a listener, not a learner, not an analyst.
August 3, 2018: Old Toys, New Toys
Keywords: dbpower, X600C, drone, hexacopter, Sceptre, Komodo, 4K LED UHD TV, Seiki
Finally, I have put my drone together - it hadn't come out of its box, let alone been assembled, since I bought it, at the end of 2016. Getting it to fly was another story - with six props, this thing is able to go in directions the Good Lord hadn't invented, and after I understood you have to actually calibrate this thing manually, I set about teaching it which way is up. Kinda makes sense - the thing has no real understanding of the power each motor puts out, so my session began by it flipping itself repeatedly. Turns out you even have to calibrate the power output on the joystick, and "zero" both joysticks once drone and control unit are talking to each other. Do that wrong, and the thing jumps like a kangaroo seeing his mother-in-law coming down the alleyway. I recall a friend getting one, earlier, and launching his straight over the roof of the house - you do have to figure out how the controls work. All told, I spent maybe a coupe of hours calibrating up/down and forward/backward settings, and by the end of the session was able to control the drone flying a few inches off the ground - interestingly, once you have the calibrations done, the drone is light enough that you actually have to steer continuously, to correct for wind. Next (next session) I'll see if the control unit remembers its settings, and then calibrate turn radius, because turning is an all separate function - again, using six freaking props. I have the video working - one reason I bought this unit was that is continuously transmits live video (SD, 640x480) to a smartphone over WiFi, where the camera (the white thing under the fuselage in the picture of the upturned drone) turns into a WiFi hotspot. Pretty amazingly small and light, and my 6" Blü phone nicely fits in the handset bracket on the drone control unit, while the app can actually record the video as you fly along. I spent maybe half an hour getting the WiFi and camera to work, yesterday, and another hour finding and losing and finding and securing the impossibly small screws that hold the various bits together.
The reason for me to buy this drone was simply that I had never flown a drone before, and at the time most drones were able to record video on a memory card, but transmitting live video, so you can watch in real time where you're flying, was rare (well, unless you wanted to spend $600..). It is kind of cool, and as you have to do all sorts of stuff all at the same time, flying a drone should help me test and maintain dexterity and response time. Generally, as you get older, the only way - or so the scientists opine - to maintain your brain, excercise, is by learning new stuff. We humans tend to get lazier, over time, and that probably is one of the main causes of deterioration. You have to keep learning, keep up the discipline, and take notes. Important, that - I learned taking notes in my education, and later in the lab, but then I had chemo, and found my brain didn't store stuff as well as it used to. So - more notes. Not so much to be able to retieve things, but if you write things up, your memory works four hundred times better.
Two days in a row, I've had to turn the A/C off, as I expect shipments I have to sign for, and I don't necessarily know I can hear the knock at the door when UPS or FedEx arrives. Some drivers just knock, don't ring the doorbell, one never knows. And as it is blisteringly hot, I'm just hoping they'll be early today. Yesterday, it was 7pm, and I had steam coming out of my ears. Today, as soon as he gets here, I can start swapping my four year old Seiki out for a brand new 4K UHD LED display panel. The Seiki (a 39" SE39UY04), bought in 2014, hasn't broken yet, but started acting up a few days ago, has 4K too, one of the early ones, but only at 25 and 30 HZ, or frames-per-second (depending on whether your mains frequency is 50 or 60HZ) - I picked that up Open Box at Fred Meyer, around the time Seiki tried to flood the market with what turned out to be a premature firmware release. The new unit can run 4K UHD - that's 3840x2160 - at 60Hz, and 1080p (the "standard" HD) at 120Hz. Then I'll likely sling the Seiki on Ebay, somebody may like to see if they can make use of it, with the caveat it may not last that long.
Ah, there it is. The screen is amazing - can't tell you what the UHD looks like, as I need to dig up my HR Blu-Ray player to test that. But the "regular" HD looks amazing, I've not seen my high resolution photography with that much detail. For the price (just under $250) a steal. With all the bells and whistles and latest levels of HDMI and HDCP - you can look it up at the Sceptre website under model number U435CV-UMR. Of course, every time they introduce an upgrade to a standard, like from HDM 1.4 to 2.0, your monitor adapter may not be compatible - in my case, the HP laptops come with DP (DisplayPort) monitor connections, and so my DP-to-HDMI connector needs to be upgraded. I mean, it may not need it, but if I don't get a higher standard adapter I'll never know what it can do with this new display. Etc. Letchaknow.
August 8, 2018: Sport is not exercise
Keywords: drone, hexacopter, Sceptre, HP 2570 graphics, GPS, Android, cellular snooping, health, exercise, competitive sports
Turns out I can't use (for now) the new Sceptre display's 4K resolution, because the DisplayPort on my HP Elitebooks is version 1.1, and I would need version 1.4a to go to HDMI 2.0, which is what my display supports. Next laptop, I guess. Ah, wait, there is a port replicator for the HP 2560/2570, and that has DisplayPort 1.2, rather than 1.1. Maybe that will work. Worth a try. The other solution might be a USB 3.0 display adapter, but that is a lot more expensive, and probably uses a lot of CPU, as well. Let's check out the port replicator, just under $20, first. Mustn't forget to clean and test the old Seiki display, this week, and probably get that back to its original firmware, I had it running with the 50" firmware, allegedly "better" than the 39" firmware, but putting the native firmware back will probably be less confusing to any buyer.
If you're concerned your phone (I can only speak about Android, as I've never owned an Ithing) passes location information on to the maker of an app, you can stop worrying. A smartphone has a number of different ways to localize you, and even if you turn GPS off, for as long as there is a SIM card in the phone, or even if there isn't, but WiFi is on, the handset will let the carrier of record know where it is, in relationship to cellular towers or WiFi hotspots. I was, a few years ago, completely taken aback when visiting Beijing, finding that my (pre-Android) Blackberry could show me exactly where it was, down to a diagram of the building I was in. This, peeps, on a secure Blackberry, on a VPN that didn't touch the Chinese cell network, and allowed me to connect to all of the forbidden fruit, like Facebook and Twitter.
All I am saying is that the nature of cellular networks, even before WiFi "happened", was such that location was always available information. Every cellular base station has a GPS unit built into it, as that is how cellular networks determine their local time, information they pass on to your handset, that is how your clock gets set. The GPS in your smartphone only makes it more accurate in determining its location. To just make a superfluous observation, if the phone and the cell tower won't know each other's location (in the radio transmission sense), you're not going to make and receive calls. And if the next repeaters don't know where your phone is, and your phone doesn't know where the next repeaters are, you're not going to have a conversation while you move. Or receive your next call. Or email. So for the Pentagon to tell soldiers to stop using those fitness apps when on any kind of base is folly, as the functionality of fitness apps includes determining how far you ran, where your buddies were, and then they need your email login so they can identify you (and find all other internet information about you, like where you buy your socks, because Macy's has your email address too). I had actually thought to buy a second Blackberry Priv, set that up without an email address, and see how well (or badly) that would work, but I just noticed my vendor has no more reconditioned Privs, and I don't really have the money, anyway, this summer, for an additional experiment, not with my move coming up (hopefully) soon.
While we are on the subject of excercise, military or otherwise, excercise to keep you healthy is not the kind that military and athletic and other overachievers do. What they do must eventually be carefully "built down" when they finish with their careers, and get back to a more normal physical achievement level, if only because the automatic consequences of physical overachievement can have severe physical and medical consequences, later in life. I know at least three Dutch competitive swimmers who ended up being severely overweight.. I know a dancer who ended up with a heart condition because she had trained to the point her heart was five times "normal" size, and had moved to the center of her chest, as there wasn't enough room in the customary location.. I know a competitive cyclist whose heart condition was never diagnosed as he was in superb physical shape and never had any complaints, and annual physicals had never found anything wrong - until his heart just stopped, and he was found in the road with his feet still in the pedal straps.
I am saying all this because I have just seen a bunch of click bait ads, some of which have a former Olympic swimmer talk about "fit employees". I am sorry to say a competitive Olympic swimmer knows nothing about health and fitness. His fitness came with his athletic career, and isn't an example for the average worker, nor, indeed, for an employer. Even if you accept your fitness level has anything to do with your health, an employer still has to wonder whether this is anything to do with them, whether it is their business, and how far that actually reasonably goes. Because: people who exercise generally have injuries, and some of those can have long lasting, or even permanent, consequences. Before I got my "Silver Sneakers" health insurance gym membership, I took long daily walks to try and maintain my fitness. On one of those walks, I was attacked by a dog, fell, and ended up with a collapsed lung. That was a direct consequence of my fitness regime, and had that been part of my "employee health efforts", you can bet your ass I'd have sued my employer. All I am saying, the over-exposure to "healthy living" has many consequences, some good, some not so much. Put on lots of muscle, you're going to have to find a way to get rid of that when you get old and become less active, because if you don't, it'll turn into fat. Which is massively bad for your heart. Think about it.
August 13, 2018: How long can you push?
Keywords: Durango, A/C, health, exercise, Musk, Tesla, Silver Sneakers, SEC, DoJ, DoD
A bit sad my workout buddy is having some medical issues that stopped him from taking walks - and by the time I realized this was going to the longer term, I had to decide what to do. Part of my routine is always walking to the gym - between the walk there and back, and half an hour of weights and rowing machines and the like, four times a week, I have the perfect workout (especially with all of the recent research indicating walking is better than running, and 90 minute workouts are counter-productive). So what with D. now driving to the gym and back, I've had to tell him I am going back to my walking routine - at my age, you cut back on exercise, that's forever. And that I don't want. I just don't like disappointing people, but it is my health we're talking about here, and what with the arthritis and the cancer, I always feel I am fighting a bit of a battle.
The SUV seems to be holding up with my DIY maintenance - I thought I might have screwed up the A/C, but after the last repressurization with "clean" R134a it is fine now, that may have recirculated some of the compressor oil through the system, which has interconnected front-and-back refrigerant circuits. All I need to do now - later, at the end of summer - is replace the coolant. It is not that the cooling system is in trouble, but I think after this much time replacing the coolant, draining the entire system, flushing the block completely with the lower hose removed, and then replacing that with a new hose, and repressurizing it, should keep 'er shipshape. Yes, it is getting to be a long, hot summer up here, one reason why I made sure the air conditioning was working OK. When I drove up here from Virginia, the A/C compressor broke, and after having that replaced, I've had to learn how to maintain the A/C myself. Guess I managed... I've discovered, as well - don't laugh - that having my oil changed at Pep Boys, where I previously had some maintenance done, is actually cheaper than getting oil and filters at WalMart, and doing it myself. Especially since they rotate my wheels (with the oversize all terrain tires I bought from them) for free. Go figure.
Speaking of cars, the more I watch Elon Musk's antics, the more I wonder if he is a loose cannon. This if often an issue with overachievers, whose stock in trade is pushing the envelope, based on a brain that is close-to-genius, and an absence of risk avoidance. All of the times I overreached and pushed boundaries, I always landed on my feet, and that has taught me only that those high jumps are very addictive. There comes a time when "kicking up" is the only way you know how to operate. Leaving Verizon, I found it impossible to "think small" - not because I thought I knew better than everybody else, but because I had not had any opportunity to get a feel for "taking small steps" for years. I recall that when I wanted to go see staff overseas, and my bosses didn't see the immediate need, I simply booked a ticket to Singapore or Chennai on my own dime - I could work from Verizon offices in overseas cities if I wanted to, and nobody would ever ask on whose orders I was there. That's how you get things done, and I always brought back results.
Anyway, by the time Musk launched a test rocket towards Mars with a Tesla in its nose cone, I really began to wonder what, if anything, he was trying to prove. And now that he has Tweeted he'll take Tesla private, he really must be made to understand he, too, must adhere to a set of rules - it is actually often the SEC that is used to discipline wayward entrepreneurs, an SEC that has the power to stick someone in jail for a decade, while paying a ten million dollar fine. Not a lot of regulators do that. I've even wondered why a naturalized South African gets to handle sensitive DoD contracts - that's unusual and may be very risky. I know - from experience, in my office overlooking Important Customer The Pentagon - that the Fed is extremely sensitive to "perceived risk" - things that can come back to bite them. The Pentagon had a large gaping smoking hole to show for this - one I drove past, on my way home and on my way to the office, several days a week. My (cleared) people were in there, helping the DoD fix things. The rest of the week, I was in Manhattan, wiring Wall Street back together - all stark reminders of the old adage: "In America, when things go wrong, they go very wrong". Musk seems to think he safely got on the highway - maybe he has, but that does not mean he's safe. I remember the face of the Enron representative, way back in Manhattan, when I told her I was shutting down our (Bell Atlantic - Enron) joint venture in downstate New York, the one Enron was trying to showcase to Wall Street. I hadn't told my boss, because this was my decision, but soon enough, Enron's CEO, Jeffrey Skilling, was on the phone to the president of my division, telling him what had happened, and asking him who I thought I was, who my boss was, whose decision this was, and how to get this back on track. Short conversation: it was my decision, and it was final (Enron had not delivered their portion on time, and changed the deliverable without notification, my Lotus Note was on his desktop by that time). My bosses knew I was covering them by taking this decision myself, they could not be blamed by Enron, or the NY State PSC, or the FCC, nor could the Wall Street Journal nail anyone's ass to the wire (except mine, of course). The day Mr. Musk runs into someone in the Fed who does my kind of stuff, after he makes a mistake, he is toast, he can take the next rocket to Mars. The Enron CEO went to jail in 2006, and is, as I write this, still there.
It is commonly accepted that a megalomaniac overachieving moneymaker is safe, because his allegiances are self serving, and only pose a risk to the stock market. We should understand, from the 2008 crash, that this is not always true, and we should understand, as well, that such a person really does not have allegiances we can in any way influence - or even understand...
August 20, 2018: Trump and online shopping
Keywords: Seagate, RAID, USB 3.0, eSATA, credit, credit rating, Amazon, Ebay, Trump, Bezos
You get kind of used to having things work just so, and my never ending supply of external backup drives is no exception. I've had 4 750GB Seagate drives, originally part of a RAID array I had put together myself, when I found out Windows Vista supported RAID at the driver level. Then came a couple of big Fantom drives - one RAID assembly, and a "regular" 2TB 5.25" drive in enclosure. The RAID drive eventually died because its fan failed - I've not really had much success with the RAID enclosures, a couple of others did not last either. But the 2TB Fantom "GreenDrive" has lasted, I think, over ten years, and until yesterday was still happily taking backups. It would still be doing that today, if I had not decided it was probably slowly time to replace it, under the "better safe than sorry" motto. It sat behind my primary laptop, where it gets backed up to several times a day, using a Robocopy script that grabs all of my important updates of the hour or the day, including email and finances. Then, those updates get backed up to a network drive, using an encrypted AIS backup session. The NAS drive is local, but in principle, that could be sitting anywhere, if I trusted the cloud enough. I may eventually decide to get more storage space with my Singapore hoster, and start putting my backups there, but for now, this works fine. What you don't want to do is use Google's or Microsoft's or Amazon's Cloud, because miscreants know to look there, and they have time and skills.
My older external backup drives all have eSATA connections, and I have always bought laptops that have an external eSATA interface. The native disk interface in a PC, SATA is fast (6GB/sec), and you can boot a PC from an external SATA drive as if it is a native internal boot drive. What with the availability of USB 3, though, I've been playing around with that interface, almost as fast (5GB/sec) as eSATA, getting cheaper by the day, and I got a USB 3 enclosure, and a backup 2TB 2.5" laptop disk. All that seems to work fine, has a much smaller footprint than the previous drives, and does not need an external power supply. Now that I got a docking station for my HP Elitebooks - those are, at this point, available new on Ebay for $20 - I have plenty of USB 3 ports, so decided to take the plunge, moved the file system from the backup to a 2TB Seagate laptop drive, plugged that into my mail machine, and we'll see how well that does. You have to remember USB is a shared resource, but I don't have other heavy demands on the bus, at this point only an ATSC TV dongle, so there should not be any issues. Once I move I'll get a larger RAID array, so I'll be able to consolidate the backups there, and use the "old" RAID array, in mirror mode, as my live archive.
For the American financial system to insist on consumers to have multipe lines of credit seems a bit silly. Apart from which, in this immigrant country overseas accounts (I mean accounts in countries with a modern credit system) aren't taken into account, either - I'll bet you a hundred bucks many of the millions of Asians who live along the West Coast have accounts in their home countries. Some for emotional reasons, others have kept Mum's savings account, and others just keep the inheritance where it came from. I am looking at this because, now that my credit rating has finally been reinstated, the bank keeps nagging me about getting more credit. That's something I certainly don't want to do with them - in actual fact, I really don't want to get more credit, because what you borrow you gotta pay back - but I am not really sure if I want another "proper" credit card, or another bank account. Just to make sure I am well covered, for when my apartment comes through, I have now gotten another line of credit, one thing I did not want to do is apply for that in the middle of address changes and all that. It's all in the timing, I suppose.
Not long after President Trump let fly at Amazon and Jeff Bezos, Amazon began charging local sales tax on everything it sells. Until that time, sales tax depended on where the shipment was shipped from, but no more. Effectively, that means much of my Amazon shopping has become 10.4% more expensive - and as there is a $25 minimum you have to order to qualify for free shipping, that all adds up. Ebay, on the other hand, does not charge sales tax on stuff from out-of-state, and you can just pick-and-choose those Ebay sellers that offer free shipping. So today, I ordered some beauty products, and a drive enclosure there, and saved $6. Ebay is a lot more work, you have to wade through their somewhat arcane search engine, and deal with the cluttered screens, but hey, it is money. That was $6 of $36, or 16%, partly due to said sales tax. Thanks, Mr. Trump. I think. Amazon must be paying tens of millions of dollars in sales tax, now, bet the states are happy - and it isn't costing Amazon a dime.
August 25, 2018: Out with the old
Keywords: USB 3.0, eSATA, Trump, Plugable graphics, technology agnostic, May, Skype, Brexit, HP docking station, Elitebook, DisplayPort, Seattle Housing Authority
Maybe unusual for a former journalist, but I have all but given up on The News. Between Trump's antics in the USA, and Britain's Brexit, I get the feeling the lunatics have taken over. The one thing that jumps out at me, in both cases, is that we appear to have gotten to the point where the "leaders" we put in charge are completely without moderation. Britain's Mrs. May spends virtually all her time flying back and forth between London and Brussels, in "negotiations", when there is barely anything to negotiate, and what there is, could simply be discussed on Group Skype. Folks seem to delight in information-fed opinions, which they proclaim loudly on social media, selectively gathered because there is way to much information out there for anyone to parse, and few people seem to have had any kind of training in research and information gathering. I am saying that because I did have that training, in IT - I continue to be amazed at the great unwashed masses, doing lookups on Gooogle without any idea of how to do a database search, how to use language to get encompassing results, and that if you have a hard time spelling, your search results will be skewed, because the search engines (or its programmers) make assumptions. I had never lived in a blue collar environment before, but what I see here in this corner of Seattle suburbia is absolutely horrifying.
I had wondered why people answer calls from numbers they don't know, but they simply aren't computer savvy to the point they can use the tools available for screening. Way back when, in the phone company, I got famous (and told off) for refusing to hire people who didn't have an email address on their resume - this when not everybody did have email - and later, for anybody listing a Hotmail account, rather than a "real" email address. Remember: I worked in IT, and I had to have an easy way of weeding out the people who paid only lip service to computer skills. Today, recruiters, I would recommend you ask applicants if they receive their bank statements in the U.S. Mail, and for anyone who has to use technology in their job, even if they only need to run vehicle diagnostics online to the DMV, if they get paper statements, don't hire them, and help them by telling them that if they want to be seen as internet conversant, that has to be demonstrated in everyday life. If you don't manage your internet account online, you are a computer agnostic. There is not, intrinsically, anything wrong with that, but "further education" appears not to be very high on many citizen's wish list - not helped, probably, by recruiting managers who fail to see a person's taking community college courses as an example of achievement. It is not that hard to figure out who is eager to learn, and willing to advance their mind.
While I am desperately trying not to spend any money I don't need to, this to make sure I have enough in the kitty for when my move comes (this when the Seattle Housing Authority offers me an apartment), sometimes you have to. So the replacement of my main flat panel display led to a plethora of things whose need is, at best, debatable. They're not massively expensive items, and I am happy to report the high resolution display is now running at high resolution, thanks to a docking station for the laptop, and a graphics converter on one of its USB3 ports.
After replacing my aging Seiki display with a state-of-the-art Sceptre 4k UHD HDMI 2.0 display, I discovered my HP Elitebooks DisplayPort interfaces don't run at a high enough frequency to actually serve up 4K over HDMI. In fact, the dock I just got for the Elitebook 2570p won't even run non-Dolby audio over DisplayPort. So after some Googling, I found some USB 3.0 port converters that are supposed to support 4K with audio, pretty amazing, considering the bandwidth needed to output that. USB is a shared resource, and I have some other stuff plugged into that bus, so the best thing was to try. At least I could then remove one DisplayPort connector - my other display runs SVGA, a connector the Spectre no longer even offers. So, in one fell swoop, from no USB 3 devices, I now have three - a 2TB hard disk, a TV dongle (which, for some weird reason, won't load its drivers on USB 2 any more) and the Plugable HDMI adapter. While I had Blue Screens using too many USB devices on this HP before, the addition of the docking station seems to have resolved that, must have its own interrupts on the docking port.
A perfect solution it is not - at the highest resolution, 3840x2160, I can run no higher than 30 Herz, but that resolution makes things truly small, so I am happy with 2048x1152 @ 60 Hz. The sound output shows you how restrictive the USB 3 port can be - it'll run no higher than 16 bit @ 48000 Hz, over native HDMI that would normally max out at 24 bit @ 192000 Hz. On my setup, running high resolution video at maximum resolution results in noticeable audio delay, although I am running an HD VGA display at the same time, which may skew the results.
August 31, 2018: Death with Dignity
Keywords: T-Mobile, router, wiFi, 802.11ac, USB storage, terabytes, POLST, GP, PCP, physician assisted death, assisted suicide, machine intelligence, AI
Many modern routers are fitted with USB ports, this so you can hook up a USB storage device, and use it as a shared network drive. I had tried that once, couldn't get it to work, and forgot about it, as I have plenty of network storage. But as I replaced my 2TB 3.5" backup drive with a 2.5" version, I was cleaning the "old" drive, which is perfectly serviceable, and wondered if there was anything useful I could make it do. Turns out I have almost a terabyte of recorded HD broadcast TV on one NAS drive, as one of my systems, using an ATSC dongle, automatically records many of my favourite programs, something I used to use a Tivo for, but this is on a much larger scale. And as the NAS drive is 70% full, which is saturation point, in my book, as these drives take backups, I figured I might as well transfer the TV to the 2TB drive. As it turns out, the reason I couldn't make it work on the router before, is that you have to make work directories on the drive prior to activating it, you cannot create file systems or store data in the root of the shared drive. But once there is a directory structure, you can use it as a normal drive - quite quick, too. I don't know how much life is left in the old girl, but the TV recordings aren't a must-have, so they'll be fine there, and can be shared right from the router. Its use does not seem to degrade router bandwidth, so so far, so good. Using an adapter, the drive runs from USB3 to eSATA, with a 3GB/sec transfer rate, which is acceptable. By comparison, it runs at around 30 MB/sec from Windows 10, when a super fast striped NAS drive gets 100 MB/sec.
Next thing on my list turns out to be Windows' task scheduler - where I found a bunch of tasks I had turned off elsewhere, "update" tasks by Google and Adobe, still being started. It isn't the updates these folks are concerned with - Google and Adobe, amongst many others, use their "update" tasks, which run at least once a day, to collect data on you. Google does not need to provide updates for my systems, as I don't use their software, and Adobe - suffice it to say that when I run Adobe software, it can update, but there isn't a need to run this daily. Somebody ought to start billing these folks for the CPU cycles they use without permission, then sue them, class action style, for non-payment.
Senator McCain's death brought the conversation to euthanasia,
and the POLST form my GP gave me, a while ago. Physician Assisted Death is legal in the State of Washington, one of the reasons I live here: should the cancer ever return, it is nice to have an easy way out, previously, I would have had to return to my native Netherlands, where euthanasia is legal. I should add that it is not, in Washington State, here, physicians, supported by another physician, can prescribe lethal medication for you to take, provided (to keep it short) you have less than six months to live. I had another look at the POLST form, which kind of regulates the aftermath of one's life, and confirms rules for terminal care, resuscitation, medical interventions, tube feeding, etc. The difference with other methods, like a living will, is that this is co-signed by the physician - this is how you get the form, physicians in this state are required to provide these to at-risk patients, which I guess I am. My doctor, who is South Asian, couldn't even bring herself to discuss the implications. The difference with advance directives and living wills is that this is a state government directive, supported by the 2008 Death with Dignity Act. It handily sails around Federal law, under which assisted suicide is illegal. I hope to never need it, but it is certainly more elegant than eating your gun, which creates a real mess for others to clean up. This does not. No, I am not in failing health, simply thought about it as I have not filled out the form, which I've had for six months, maybe I'll deal with this once I have an apartment, which will involve a new GP, in town. Having said all that, I am glad she gave me the form, as this is one of those things I need to take care of. Updating my will, which I really have not done since NYNEX made me, when sending me overseas, is another one of those chores...
You know, it just occurred to me I could probably not post the above narrative on Facebook, as their suicide watch AI would go off? When is someone going to painfully prove to these people they are out of hand, not omnipotent, and no amount of computing power can help them understand people? AI and Neural Networks were in their infancy when I joined Bell Labs and NYNEX S&T, then spent well over a decade dying a slow death. I must repeat: there is no such thing as Artificial Intelligence, there is only intelligence. Machine intelligence? Not this side of the 22nd century. It is easy to prove: for social media and government websites to require two factor authentication to make sure it is you logging in, there is no machine intelligence at Google, Social Security, Chase Bank, Facebook, etc. If those interfaces were intelligent, they'd know it was you without you ever having to enter a password. Remember: first it was passwords, then we needed passwords and secure IDs, now we do passwords and codes to smartphones. That means it got worse, not better. When your new partner and you get to know each other, you need less communication, not more. That, my friends, is intelligence. An electric car in automatic mode killing its driver is Artificial Stupidity - the driver's, and yours, with Elon Musk's hubris.
September 11, 2018: Busywork
Keywords: 9/11, Manhattan, Pentagon, Lou Gehrig, ALS, home maintenance, alarm system, camera surveillance, global warming, reusable energy, carbon avoidance
Oops! I only belatedly realized it's been almost two weeks since I last posted, and somewhere in there is mention of Death With Dignity and wills and things - better post this before someone starts putting two and two together, and arriving at 1,255. The only person dying - slowly - is a cousin, who has had the misfortune of attracting ALS, a.k.a. Lou Gehrig's disease, something that kills you, no cure. I hope to be able to go visit him well before the year is out, while he is still "all there". Horrendous there still are illnesses for which no cure exists. I believe he has opted for euthanasia, which is available to someone with his condition, in The Netherlands. Ah, and today is September 11...
What with the housemates gone gallivantin' abroad for a week, I had the opportunity to do some maintenance, reorganize my stuff to prepare for my (hopefully soon..) move to the city, and do a bunch of maintenance on my computers, making sure I have monitoring and alarm systems ready. For years, whenever I move, I make sure alarm system and internet are in before I move, and the place is fumigated. Especially a connected alarm system is important - I've once had a burglary attempt, in Westchester County, the day after a removal van had unloaded furniture at the house. So I spent the week making sure stored equipment still works, updating the "new apartment" shopping list, making sure I have the finances sorted, and then I go on waiting on the city. The only thing I forgot was to test my combo-oven, not much could have broken on it, though, ovens and microwaves are things that only break when in use.
All of the testing does mean I have a working monitoring / alarm system, that stores camera stills and -video on a remote server, before a burglar or other miscreant even knows they are being filmed. And I am not using anybody's "cloud", so my privacy is guaranteed. I should actually say I have my own private cloud, which you can set up by renting server space somewhere, and using an encrypted transfer mechanism to store your stuff. The only change, or, if you will, addition I have made is that the camera not only provides an RTP stream to the iSpy application I have spent many hours getting to run "just right" (meaning it mustn't overload my FTP protocol, which will shut down the link if it gets too many logins), but it now emails my smartphone at the same time, enabling me to log in and check the video, so the alarm system is complete, and any miscreants should never know they've been "seen", and even if they do, their pictures will already have been sent to a server on the other side of the globe.
The more I follow the endless and fruitless discussion about global warming, and the weather statistics available, the more I have to come to the conclusion no amount of carbon avoidance or windmills or what have you is going to bring about an appreciable change in the environment. We've been "at it" for quite a while, but there isn't any statistical evidence that any of this stuff is working. And then I am not even getting on my hobby horse - nobody wanting to even think about how much damage we are doing to the ecology by converting energy from air movement into electricity. There is no telling how much global warming is caused by the reduction in wind speed due to turbine parks - nobody is even researching that. Imagine hotter wind, at a lower flow rate.. would get your hair dryer, faster, but the rest..
There is no "free" energy, nor is there any such thing as "reusable" energy. You use it, it's gone. It comes back in some other form, which isn't usable energy, it can come back as pollution, as heat, as water, all things that have their uases, in the right place, at the right time. And I am serious: until somebody proves to me the air flow we re-purpose to generate electricity has no ecological function, I vote for not using it. Same with solar panels - until somebody proves to me that the solar radiation we prevent from hitting the earth has no ecological function, don't do it.
September 17, 2018: Amazon has had its day
Keywords: Ebay, Amazon, AliExpress, AliBaba, Chinese traders, USPS, mail order, sales tax
Where Amazon was once blisteringly competitive, it clearly is looking for a different way of conducting trade - until now, it just was not clear to me which way it was heading. But if you look at recent developments, Amazon is going upmarket, making the most of a subscription model that ties the consumer to its ecosystem 24/7, much like Facebook and Google have attempted - and failed - to do. If Amazon can make this delivery thing work - specifically for the Prime subscriber, who identifies by being able to pay, annually, for, basically, air and promises - it does, in many ways, what Costco does.
Costco makes you buy much more than you need under the premise that that is "cheaper", something you can only do if you pay them an annual subscription fee. What in fact happens is that you pay more money than you need to, money assumed to be "future savings" - you just spent $20 on coffee for four months, when I spent $6 on coffee for one month at Wincofoods, which means I have $14 still in my pocket - your coffee, to add insult to injury, you now have to store in your home, and I'll bet you have never calculated what each square foot of your home dedicated to storing things you do not use actually costs, inclusive of heating and cooling. But of course, you bought the bigger house, because in 20 years' time, it'll be worth much much more than you paid for it - maybe. So you pay extra money for your Costco product storage space - to your mortgage bank. In the interim, Amazon is rapidly running away from the concept that made it big and powerful - selling things cheaply, and shipping them cheaply, quickly. But that was then, and this is now. To the right a USB 3.0 disk caddy I just bought via Ebay from a trader in China - admittedly, it took weeks, but for $9, including shipping, without sales tax, I am happy - as this caddy is made of transparent plastic, I can see what disk is in there, helpful, as I sometimes have to switch disks, and often don't know which disk is in which caddy. These laptop disks are often backup disks, having been retired from "main" duty when they were replaced with a faster or bigger version, and so are in perfectly good shape.
Amazon now tries to make sure you never have to go to the store to shop, in a mix of large volume cheap stuff, with "free" shipping, delivery to pickup centres near your travel path, commute, or home or office, and fresh and premium products delivered directly to you. Today, if you order from Amazon using its own delivery service, the website will tell you, on the day of delivery, where in your town your order is, and how many stops it'll take for the driver to get to you - a completely useless service that Amazon invented, solely to get you addicted. And a far cry from negotating mammoth contracts with UPS and the Postal Service, which now delivers Amazon packages on Saturday and Sunday. And Amazon is clearly aiming at a subscription model, where it somehow knows when you need what, and gets it on the road to you - you make coffee to take in the car, notice you'll low on half & half, tell Alexa on your way out the door, and by the time you get home it is on the porch (Huawei makes a robot vacuum you can operate via Alexa). I noticed that after President Trump ordered an inquiry into Amazon's use of the Postal Service, Amazon immediately began charging local sales tax on every order, regardless of where it originated - previously, out-of-state shipments did not incur sales tax. And I've not seen riots in the streets, this despite the fact that many Amazon purchases, here in Washington State, for instance, now cost a whopping 10% more than they did before. Why no protest? This is sales tax, not money you pay to Amazon, so it reasoned you wouldn't protest at "obeying the law". And you didn't!
Reason for me to move most of my online shopping to Ebay, where only shipments originating in your home state are surcharged. With some extra effort, you can actually find many products you used to buy at Amazon (where you look up the product number) for the same price, or cheaper, you just have to wade through page after page of the same product. And if it is similarly priced, I still save the 10.4% sales tax... One nice thing about Ebay is that some products are offered by overseas merchants - in the UK, or Germany, or France, for instance - at competitive prices. They take a bit longer to get here, but I've recently saved $10 on a drive enclosure from China, $10 on 98 coffee pods from the UK, and a whopping $28 on 2 clock batteries from Germany for my laptops...
September 24, 2018: Fall comes with Moving and Maintenance
Keywords: landlord, apartment, moving, Dodge Durango, Body Control Module, contact lenses, vision correction, Het Parool, Femke van der Laan, The Guardian, paywall, exercise walk
Some relatively minor functions of my SUV have been acting up - indicators, central locking, that sort of thing. Intermittently, nothing serious, but I eventually thought I needed to find out what was causing that. Turns out that is likely a failing "Body Control Module" - little did I know this 2003 Dodge has not just one, but multiple computers, this particular one in charge of timing and switching and things. IOW, non-engine related. It has been interesting, (largely) doing your own car maintenance, something I had not done since my 'twenties, started again after moving to Seattle on my last dimes after the 2008 stock market crash. Between the various car sites, Youtube and Amazon and Ebay, it is not rocket science any more, and, as always, you learn from your (copious) mistakes. This particular module I am not sure about, as some websites have it it needs programming, but the vendor says it is probably good as is - as I got it off Ebay, he knows I can return it, so I'll give it a go.
I've had a sinus thing going on for weeks now, I think one of the housemates brings a bug home from one of the schools they work at, and then my impaired immune system does the rest. It isn't major, but this time around my eyes seem to have gotten affected - well, possibly. The vision correction in both my eyes has changed, significantly, actually lowered, something I had never experienced before - and my optometrist was pretty flustered, as well. So I've got a pair of contacts with the new correction, see how that works, for a few weeks, I just hope that's the end of it. To be honest, I don't know that the sinuses and the vision are related, but it is possible, especially since my rheumatologist has made so many changes in my medication. At least the correction is going down, eyes corrected with contact lenses do do that - as I understand it, the contact lens leaves the eye still actively correcting, while glasses do the focusing for the eye. Something like that. In the past, I've usually had slight changes in one eye or the other - I use a monovision correction, where one eye is corrected for distance vision, the other for close up - but I can only recall one occasion of both eyes changing at once, in 45+ years of wearing contact lenses.
It is increasingly clear to me that the pay walls used online by newspapers serve little purpose, other than to alienate readers. I noticed this the other day, when the excellent column Femke van der Laan, widow of Amsterdam Mayor Eberhard van der Laan, writes for the Amsterdam daily Het Parool, was moved behind the Parool paywall. I realized that meant she lost, from one day to the other, probably 80% or more of her readership. What would be the point of that? I kinda don't think they said to her: "Let's see if you're worth money, and lose you lots of readers while doing so", and she then said: "Great!". There are, today, so many publications that have good articles that it is not feasible to take sign-in memberships or paid subscriptions to them, the way it used to be when newspapers were newspapers. Alan Rusbridger, the former editor of The Guardian, and now an academic, made the point well in the BBC's Hardtalk, the other day, stating that The Guardian now has a billion Pounds in the kitty, and uses a formula that has subscribers to the paper pay to keep its access open, because the subscribers feel this is a worthy cause. He made the point that the New York Times, once the nation's conscience, is NOT, today, read by 97% of the American population. And I think that shows. Once authoritative, it has become a playground for petty opinionators. From what I can see, it looks like Het Parool decided to un-paywall Ms. van der Laan again, so I guess somebody saw the light. And no, it isn't that different from when you had to pay for paper journals and magazines - once they were sold, everybody could read them, in the library, or in the house, or in the pub, they were shared, it wasn't ever pay-per-reader - which is what they try to do today!
Owell, time for my walk. I've changed my exercise regime over to three gym visits per week, plus a long walk, as I noticed my workouts didn't "do it" for my legs, and there is the daylight / vitamin D equation as well, of course. For now, the summery weather continues - we had a bit of rain, but I gather that's gone for the week. Nice... And then, in the lovely sun, see if I can get the new timing computer to work. The guy on Ebay who posted the installation video didn't bother transferring the firmware either, although he didn't report the results of his surgery. Let y'all know.
October 2, 2018: Under the weather, and nothing on telly
Keywords: Kavanaugh, congressional hearings, sinusitis, thermometer, bluetooth, contact lenses, amoeba, F 1, Formula One
And the ghastly question is this: if Kavanaugh raped a girl, or shoplifted, does that make him a bad Supreme Court judge? Don't get me wrong, if he coerced girls into sex he shouldn't be on the Supreme Court, but what happened? How did he ever get to be a judge - because rape would disqualify him from being a Federal Judge, as well. Who took that decision, and did they know? This is D.C. Prep, and Georgetown U. - these guys all knew each other. What happened to "drain the swamp"? Stank too much?
Noticing how my temperature went up during this bout of sinusitis, I realized my digital thermometer is getting to retirement age - I bought that at a Safeway (I think) in Arlington, VA, soon after I was moved there from NY, so that would be, umm, around 2001, 2002, mebbe 16 years ago. Checking prices online I thought I might as well bite the bullet and get one of those fancy forehead thermometers at Wal-Mart, where I found the shelp price to be some $10 over the web price, so had to battle to get the lower price, explaining to "Brian" that if that was the "internet only" price, the website should say so. Thankfully I had printed the webpage, with time and date, so the customer service desk went with the lower price. Only then did I realize I had bought a new blood pressure cuff recently, one that Bluetoothes with an app, and that when I installed it I noticed it was looking for a Bluetooth thermometer. Which I have now found, same brand, Provén, on Ebay, for $10 less than the Wal-Mart thermometer. Good day to waste money... As I have the Provén device on the way, I will actually return the Wal-Mart-bought device, as I am not 100% happy with its readings. On the one hand, I can get the same reading with it I can with my old digital under-the-tongue thermometer, but when I do the reading, as per the instructions, differently, the reading is more than a degree off. I expect the Provén, which does an in-ear measurement, will be more consistent. And a lot cheaper, too..
On the medical front, I told you I was having problems with my contact lenses. While my optometrist is sorting that out - the new correction is going gangbusters, for now - I noticed there is an increase in Acanthamoeba keratitis reported, especially in the UK. Over the past couple of years, I have read a number of reports of this amoeba infecting contact lens wearers, in some instances destroying their "central vision", whereas I cannot recall it ever being published in the general press before. The ailment is caused by a water borne parasite, which can cause infections with severe consequences - and no, I am not mentioning this because I have it, but if you are, like me, a contact lens addict, you may want to review the way you handle your lenses and your eyes. Long term routines can become too routine, if you follow my drift. I've never used water much in the way I deal with my contact lenses (other than for hand washing, but now I dry my hands after washing, which I did not do before, thinking I avoided lint on my lenses), but as I wear mine 24/7, for a week, and often use (optometrist sanctioned (!)) one pair for a couple of months, all this with a weekly break and hydrogen peroxide sterilization, I've been paying closer attention to the way I treat my eyes. This was one reason why I recently changed brands, just wanting to check whether or not the particular material the manufacturer uses causes me discomfort, something that can happen after years of successful use, it is even possible the chemical composition changed slightly. I am lucky, though, my medical plan includes eye care.
Once an avid Formula One aficionado, I got bored with the predictability and artifice, probably around 2014, when I spent part of the year in Thailand, and watched some races there, in the pub. The British patrons at my hotel felt the same way, only the Thais watched. And saeeing how this weekend's Russian Grand Prix ended in Lewis Hamilton "winning" because of Mercedes orders to Valtteri Bottas to let Hamilton pass - it is now about big business, not about athletes in competition. Sorry, lads, never again.
October 6, 2018: Still under the weather, but fall programming started
Keywords: sinusitis, thermometer, bluetooth, Babylon 5, Law and Order UK, account updates, spam, phishing, medical trackers
As I mentioned earlier, I thought I'd get a new body temperature thermometer, as my old one was, well, old. Besides, I don't recall ever getting it calibrated, there weren't as many "devices" available at the time. So after I received the Provèn ear canal digital thermometer, and after I tested and returned the Wal-Mart temporal digital thermometer, I kind of discovered it is the same with all of those digital devices - unless you figure out exactly how to take measurements with any of these things, and replicate that every single time, you're going to get differing readings. Nothing wrong with that, but we were - in my age group - brought up with simple, fail safe, things. Apart from anything else, if you're wanting to consolidate vital signs in one place, you're going to have a hard time finding Bluetooth capable devices, with an app, at what I would consider reasonable prices.
Having replaced my venerable Microlife wrist blood pressure meter with a Bluetooth equivalent from Provèn earlier, when I got their Bluetooth thermometer I discovered that would not talk to Provèn's own Android app. I found a workaround, eventually, but the number of things you can buy at "reasonable" prices that don't work right is staggering. In this particular case, I ended up tweaking two devices to work with a third party (out of nowhere) app - in the process discovering that the Provèn ET-828BT is actually a Jumper Medical JPD-FR302. Go figure.
Ah, great! Comet is rerunning Babylon 5, like seeing an old friend. And as Comet is a broadcaster, anybody can watch, or nearly so.. seven days a week, too - these folks are "getting it".
I only just realized - now that ITV has begun re-running Law & Order UK - that I love watching that for the same reason I love Law & Order, which I still tape the reruns off. I recopgnize the locales where it was shot, having lived in both central London and all over New York City for many years. Both places I used to walk a lot, which is how I got to know them. Makes me homesick, a bit - more to the past than that I think I should go live there again, even if I could afford to. Phone company does help you learn places, and people, and accents... Ah yes - Law & Order UK, Bradley Walsh, incredible actor, soon all over your tablet in the new Dr. Who! Woop woop!
If you are, like me, being flooded with emails from the likes of Google, Ebay, Amazon, Oath, Facebook what have you, to "verify" or "update" your account information - don't. There is absolutely no reason to ever log in to any of the services you use, unless it is to actually use them - order, look something up, what have you. The information in your account(s) does not have to be up to date, or accurate, or complete. For as long as you change whatever email address it is you want to use with the service, when that changes, there isn't any other information that has to be up to date, unless you want to start some kind of transaction. The reason for the requests is data collection. You log in, they put some tracking cookies on your system or device, and extract whatever data they can, at that point. You don't need to use them for a year, don't log in. They want your Mum's maiden name? Your Dad's middle name? Make one up (and keep a note of it, obviously). If you're Indonesian, your Mum might not have had a last name, and your Dad might not have had a middle name, anyway. And apart from the tracking, anybody snooping your data traffic - from hackers to your telecom provider or internet provider - could steal your login information, know your PC's or device's MAC address, etc. Especially since these folks send emails with a link for you to "verify your information". Just don't, it is completely unnecessary. Don't keep all your credit and debit cards on file with Amazon, or Expedia, and if you must have a card on file, pick one that expires in January. The only time they need current information is when you make a purchase, or some other transaction you need to make. Remember: if you do not update your information when you've not used the site, you can't be scammed.
October 11, 2018: Sicker!!
Keywords: sinusitis, bronchitis, steroids, supplements, antibiotics, medical, illness
I can't recall being this sick for this long - well, perhaps "sick" isn't the right word, no fever, but this prolonged bout of sinusitis is sapping my strength (by the time I am writing this, some ten days later, it has morphed into a full bronchitis, says the urgent care physician). My breathing is laboured to the point I've actually stopped going to the gym, as all that does is bring on more coughing attacks, and being on antibiotics (since augmented with a crash dosage of steroids, so now when I am not coughing I live in my bathroom) I can only assume I could spread a virus infection. From what I can glean from searches it isn't unusual to have this for several weeks, and what with both my housemates working at colleges they could easily bring back all kinds of weird stuff. Or I could have picked something up at the gym, where I now have, unusually, not been for a couple of weeks. Blah.
Increasingly, it has become clear that most vitamin and other supplements don't actually have much, or even any, beneficial effect. Recent research referenced in The Guardian seems to show vitamin D, has little or no effect on bone health, as previously Calcium supplements don't appear to have been proven to add calcium to one's bone structure. Other vitamins (check the Guardian article) are equally useless. I am particularly interested in calcium and vitamin D because I have had osteoporosis - no, not because of the Mennopause, but because I was treated with a mix of immunosuppressants and steroids for a number of years, going all the way back to England, this all before biologics were invented. When that happens, the doctors do regular bone density scans - you can see changes in bone density on regular X-rays, as well - and I can't say I've ever seen much effect of the various treatments on my bone density. Sure, I did not lose any more bone, but then I don't know if that would have happened if I hadn't taken all that stuff. I never worked out in Europe, or my first years in Florida and NYC, but after that I became a gym aficionado, and that may well have helped with the bone strengthening.
All I am saying is that it is becoming increasingly clear that vitamins, bone, stuff, are created by the body from the foods we eat, and only that way. Something similar seems to apply to the vaunted "probiotics". That process seems to not work with concentrates created in a lab. Nobody has, as of yet, completely rewritten their narratives, but short sentences like "Currently, researchers are undecided if probiotic supplements are effective." (Cleveland Clinic) are being inserted... Not a sermon, just a thought. It is interesting how we humans tend to hang on to "better safe than sorry" ideas - let's take probiotics, leading to massive unnecessary fat and sugar intake in flavoured yoghurt - and let's take calcium, even though half a brain can read up and understand the calcium in the supplements goes right through you, and we will probably discover fortified milk doesn't do anything "ordinary" milk can't.
While I am sitting here wishing my brain was functioning normally, so I could think along more easily with UCL mathematician Dr. Hannah Fry on the BBC - that's gotta be the most delicious brainiac readhead on public television - her "lecture" is, for unclear reasons, auto-followed on the iPlayer by an episode of Dad's Army. Owell. I can doze off again, until the next coughing fit.
October 20, 2018: Boring medical, mostly
Keywords: Pill Hill, referral, doctor's appointments, medical condition, health tracking app, internet scams
I don't know if I've gone crazy, but calling a medical establishment on August 27, providing a referral by the 29th, even though my insurance does not require it, and being told "we'll process it and call you", should have elicited some kind of response before October 14, when I decided to call and check progress. Then, I was told that the processing was still in the works, at which point I began asking what kind of processing takes two months, which the support person responded to by saying that was not her department, and she was just trying to help, at which point I explained I am an insured patient and a paying customer, and she should begin treating me as such, and provide solutions instead of blaming others. After hanging up, she was back on the phone within five minutes, suddenly expecting me to come in that afternoon. Slightly related, the picture here shows a 90 day supply of arthritis medication, courier delivered in a refrigerated container, to the tune of $13,500. I don't know what I'd do in this country without my fancy medical insurance....
Because of liability issues, I am not, at this time, telling you which institution and doctor's office this is, once I've been seen and have a better understanding of the issues, I can make some educated comments, this is a situation where I am unahppy with one of my specialist physicians, so am looking for another. I've seen situations like this, in the Seattle area, occurring more frequently, to the point I have an extant complaint with the Washington State Department of Health going, and have simply walked out of places for not providing adequate service. What do people do if they need to see a doctor urgently? Emergency room? I understand a new intake needs to be scheduled, but not doing anything about a valid referral for two months, and then offering a same day appointment? Are these folks crazy? I'll tell you more, names and places, once I've been seen, but considering this is an institute that has access to my medical files, the mind truly boggles. Leaving me in pain for over two months (though I could have had that seen to elsewhere) is really unacceptable. And taking some of the NSAIDs I have in stock would not help my new doctor to do a proper assessment. Not a happy camper, and I must say that if the clinic wanted to give me the feeling they really don't want new patients, they succeeded.
When you have some long term medical conditions - in this case, a form of arthritis that won't go away and was first diagnosed in 1971 - you are quite dependent on your medical team, and especially on the specialists that monitor and treat you. Changing specialists is traumatic - you develop a working relationship with the specialist, and as you get more experience, generally know what's going on with your body. But if a specialist starts doing things you don't expect, and doesn't seem to treat some of your complaints, you eventually need to do something about it. On the one hand, you don't want to switch doctors too often - they look at your medical record and wonder why - but at the same time, you can only go so long with treatments you don't really understand. That's when you try and change, and around here, once you get into Medicare age, that appears not always to be easy.
So after getting the Provèn Bluetooth digital medical equipment to work (see below, October 6) - not with its own app, because that does not talk to the thermometer - I now have new, reasonably accurate, and remotely readable diagnostic devices. Quite reasonable, too - the Bluetooth thermometer $14.95, the Bluetooth blood pressure meter $29.99, while the MedM Health Android app talks not only to both of those, but my Bluetooth heart rate monitor (XOSS, $19.99) as well. I had a separate app for that before, so am well pleased these MedM folks built an app with a huge database of compatible devices (kudos to the Amazon customer / commenter who figured that out). I had, in the interim, occasion to go to the doctor's office, so was able to verify the accuracy of all of this gear. Reasonable accuracy, of course, but at the same time you need to take into account that, since all of this gear is electronic, readings will vary, even with the professional stuff. The readings, then have more of a comparative value, and you can see trends over time, which is what I was using these devices for in the first place. The reason I maintain a record of my vital signs is my long term GP in Arlington, VA, who insisted I should do daily measurements from when I hit 50. The reason wasn't so much that there was something wrong - apart from the long term conditions we knew I had - but that my medication load was relatively high, and the measurements, when off, would provide an early indication of any "developments". The spreadsheet certainly helps me track my comparative health, and manage, to an extent, weight / food and alcohol intake. The monitoring did absolutely nothing when I subsequently developed thyroid cancer, but hey, you can't win them all.
I keep being amazed at the efforts, worldwide, to "help" consumers taken in by all manner of telecommunications and internet scams, which clearly are lucrative and easy enough to perpetrate that tens of thousands of miscreants can afford to spend 14 hours a day, seven days a week, carrying them out. The changes they're caught are small enough they keep going. I noticed that other day the Dutch government is outlawing all unrequested solicitation calls, Britain is on the way there, but what with cross-border and internet technology, for as long as consumers answer anonymous or unknown-number calls, there isn't any way to solve the problem. You'd wish you could fine people for answering unknown numbers - I stopped doing that when caller ID became available, although even before, as soon as I had an answering machine, I often used that for call screening. And yes, you can buy internet calling apps that provide your home number as caller ID, even though your call does not come from there. And you can screen your Facebook or Instagram profile so only your friends can see it, if the miscreants can't, they can't mail you. Etc.
October 28, 2018: From Small World to Defence
Keywords: rheumatology, arthritis, biologics, databases, search engines, DoD, Pentagon, security services
A relatively new type of medication, I've had great results from taking biologics, I began taking Enbrel not long after I moved to Virginia, back in 2000, switching to Humira around 2012. But after several breaks in treatment, in the past couple of years, due to my undergoing medical procedures for which I had to stop Humira temporarily, I began to wonder if it was still effective. I had no pain increase when off the medication, and it did not help with some of my arthritic symptoms, which I don't know it ever did. As my rheumatologist weaned me off the rest of the anti-inflammatory cocktail I had been on for years, I began to experience more discomfort, then found that my rheumatologist wasn't discussing this with me intelligently - meaning he was ordering me around like I was a twelve year old, and not justifying the treatment decisions he was taking for me, behaviour that gradually got worse.
If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, as a patient, try and analyze your treatment, and take your time doing it. Make sure you have the skills to do database searches - I see, on a regular basis, people who think they are able to do information searches without any kind of training or education, not understanding that a "search engine" is essentially a large database, and that you need to be trained to do adequate searches. I am, most people are not, and if you did not grow up with the internet you likely are ineffective in finding information. Anyway, back to the medics, doctors still aren't always trained appropriately in negotiating with patients, and patients don't always provide doctors with all of the information they should. I eventually, in this particular case, decided this doctor was ending up in hobby horse territory, this by comparison with the previous rheumatologists who had treated me - this since 1973, when my particular ailment had first been diagnosed, I have been treated, probably, by fourteen or so rheumatologists in four countries on three continents. So when this doctor began to treat me entirely differently from all of the others, I began to wonder if I'd lost the plot, or he.
There has to be a trust relationship between doctor and patient, if you have a serious ailment that requires very specialized care. At the same time, you have to follow doctor's orders, because that is the only way you can establish if the treatment has the effect the doctor is aiming for. But as my pain levels and discomfort increased, and I was not able to "reach him", so to speak, any more, I eventually started looking for another doctor, if only because that is the only way that lets me figure out if I am wrong, or the previous physician.
Having only just had my treatment plan changed, I do not yet know what's what, I expect that may take weeks to even months. Apart from anything else, it is always hard, if you have multiple long term conditions, to figure out what is causing which symptom - taking an artificial hormone, but without a functioning thyroid, is by itself confusing enough, as the thyroid is an "on demand" organ, and a pill is not. Keep y'all posted.
Mathematician Dr. Hannah Fry, who has been presenting and making BBC science programmes I've found riveting, recently picked up the story about scientific responsibility towards the population we serve, no doubt on the back of the Google engineers who somehow got their management to opt out of bidding on a DoD development program.
I've never worried about that. Yes, the military and the security services, at times, do unsavoury things. They're certainly rocking all over our privacy - something, unfortunately, their opponents do, as well. All this talk about facial recognition makes me laugh - back in 2008, when I last visited Beijing, every police vehicle there had a camera mounted on the roof, and I am sure the associated software could recognize faces. They don't have to worry about democracy, you see. So if they "have it", we can't afford to "not have it". Both the military and defense contractors were important customers of my division, and my servers were both on Wall Street and in the DoD. Like it or not, those establishments form an important part of the American economy, and they perform an important function - however you may dislike the way they go about things. I knew, from when I was assigned to run those networks, that I could either decide to go do something else, or accept the responsibility as part of my job. In my case, not being a U.S. citizen, it got more complicated, and I ended up asking personal advice from the Department of Defence about my suitability for the position. I ended up getting moved into a hush-hush department overlooking Arlington National Cemetery nobody in the corporation knew about, full of bona fide spooks and retired cops. And being investigated every year. Never had a problem with it, you have a job to do, do it, or leave. Of course, after you reach a certain level in that game, walking out is no longer an option, and being under surveillance is something you get used to, they're not invasive, they just always let you know they're there. I particularly liked Professor O'Mara's piece about the "issue" - which, believe you me, in the United States is not an issue at all. And it helped, too - whenever I went to buy a new gun, I put my Alien number on the FBI form, at which point the salesperson just knew it was going to be a week or more before he could charge my credit card, then calling the State Police for a request number, and to his immense surprise, coming back with an immediate approval.
November 6, 2018: Data and Server Security
Keywords: flu shot, health insurance, open enrollment, data security, server security, Apache, backup, encryption, AIS Backup, Trump rhetoric
I seem to have ended up setting myself so many writing restrictions I am left with hardly anything to write about. And most of what's left is medical related - next up, a different brand contact lenses - and makes my blog look like I am close to death, just spending my days popping pills, which I am not.. I see hundreds of hack attempts float by at my new webserver, where I have root access to my Apache load, and so can see every attempt at access, something Godaddy didn't fully allow. Must check they have actually closed my account, as I have asked them to. Anyway, I see many floaters coming in from Russian and Ukrainian websites, mostly fake commercial sites, I am assuming these are hacker sites where they distribute links. As I have disabled most of the coding and scripting languages I have access to at server level, there really isn't much a hacker can do to gain access to my server load, I am not even running mail scripts from there, and I am not running Imap anywhere, so there isn't stored mail anybody can get their hands on. For that same reason, I run a script that removes all mail immediately from Google when I read it, so there isn't any Cloud storage I use. Cloud, with the number of skilled hackers that are out there, is a really bad thing to use - if you can, keep your active data storage local. Remember, on 9/11, nobody could quickly restore their systems in Manhattan, or even easily cut over to backup systems, as the backup networks were taken out together with the primary networks, due to the sheer scale of the destruction. That is unlikely to ever happen to you, granted, but it happened to me, once in my life, in both Manhattan and Arlington, VA.
Which reminds me, I was going to test the ftp-based AIS backup with encryption. Be right back... *harum*. And yes, that works like a dream, including double encryption. I will need to do one more test, to build more stealth into the backup process, but it sits on the server outside of the published directory, I'll just need to do an additional test to see if I can get some access security going, making the directory effectively invisible. The way it is now set up, the backup can't be decrypted unless it is back on the originating CPU. One more test with different directory structures, better security, and perhaps a test with encryption. No, I really don't need that much security, but at the same time I'd like to figure out how the "remote, layered" security works, and how much that slows down the backup process. My new overseas hoster doesn't have restrictions on data volumes and throughput, so technically, over time, I could put most of my must-retain data on that server.
Hmm. The link encryption does not work - hoster probably does not support SSL over FTP. This isn't an issue, since the session is encrypted, and I can't quite see anybody hack into the link when it goes halfway around the globe - that's more of a local thing. Must say I am impressed at the multiple levels of security AIS builds into its application. More importantly, I should run a backup through my fiber connection, then try and restore using a 4G-LTE wireless connection. Interesting in two respects: the time it'll take, but the process is different as well, you have to retrieve the settings archive manually from the server, and then the software is supposed to get its command set from there, and start the restore. Let's see.
Well, yes, it is entirely possible Mr. Trump's rhetoric is complicit in the upsurge in rightist violence. But it is equally possible a change in the way Americans think and act is at the root of both Mr. Trump's election, and the racist violence we see. More anti-semitism? Reading European news sources, that's the case there, too - and nothing to do with America or Americans. I gather Jews are leaving France, moving to Israel, in droves - this even though they were somewhat of a "protected species" in France, after what the Germans and some French did to them. In many big cities in Europe, Jews are loath to wear the yarmulka in the street, they've been attacked for it, even killed. I don't know. Perhaps it is a kind of "zeitgeist", a "spirit of the age". With that, while Donald Trump probably could do better, he isn't what causes this excessive "acting out". And we need to do a lot more research on what makes people's brains go completely out of control, reject, effectively, all societal controls. I've never felt the need to kill somebody, even when in a conflict situation - I recall corporate security telling me someone had lost their lawsuit, and now really didn't like me any more - as I went to the store and bought a .38 to put under my pillow, I wondered if I would use it, should the need arise. It never did, but I am, after reading and watching all that, at the crossroads again, thinking I should get a carry permit. In my immediate area, in the space of three months, three different legally armed citizens intervened when confronted with would-be assassins, all in public areas, two at random Wal-Mart stores, one in the street in downtown Seattle. In one case, the armed assailant tried to carjack a vehicle, only to be shot and killed by the driver..
November 12, 2018: Xmas on the way
Keywords: contacts, Acuvue, monovision, extended wear, FDA, Christmas shopping
Having tried several types of Air Optix, and then Biofinity monthlies - actually, the "monthly" lenses that used to exist have more or less been done away with by the FDA, which decreed that contact lenses can only be recommended for 24 hour wear for a maximum of a week, and not for the 30 days and nights that used to be permitted. I had switched from the 30 day type (Air Optix Night & Day) to the 7 day type (Air Optix Aqua) anyway, realizing that, over time, giving your eyes one day a week to breathe is better than one day a month - once you go to 24 hour monovision contacts, which I did maybe 23 years ago, you really no longer have optimal vision with glasses, which become a necessary evil for use when you are doing your "rest day", or have an eye ailment. It was actually my optometrist who pointed out to me I could wear the "regular" Air Optix, much cheaper than the Air Optics Night & Day, 24/7 as well. But now, after my unexpected prescription change and some eye sensitivities, he has switched me to Acuvue Vita's, which are a bit thinner, and are hardly noticeable in the eye. They're harder to take out, but I guess that is par for the course, and I think they may not last as long as the Air Optix, but my reading (that is, book reading, reflected light) has improved greatly, and so has the acuity of my Blackberry Priv, which has a more-than-HD 1440x2560 AMOLED screen that makes the character set very small indeed.
I've only just started wearing a completely new set of Vita's - the previous were testers - so the jury is still out, but they're doing very well, better than any other type of lens. Monovision is finicky, and needs "settling in" - at some distance, one eye takes over from the other, and the trick is to bring that transition as closely together as possible - I just hope that after the allergy that seems to have befallen my eyes, I am stabilizing out. Come to think of it, I may have become allergic to the material Air Optix uses - not their fault, but that does happen, after all, I have two conditions that affect both my skin and soft tissues. So we'll see - my new rheumatologist has OK'd my coming off Humira, but she does want me to go see an eye doctor - as opposed to optometrist - just to make sure. But I will give the new lenses a chance to settle in first, make sure I experience no more tearing and itching.
Time kinda creeps up on you - I need to get my skates on and start on the Christmas prezzies, something I often do throughout the year, but as I didn't, certainly don't want to leave 'till the last minute. Wondering if I can find some stuff on Ebay - I hadn't previously bothered much about the sales tax, but as there is so much you can mail order without the 10% State hit... Maybe not the most social thing to do, but 10% is not nothing, something that became very noticeable when Amazon started charging sales tax on everything.
November 18, 2018: More Windows :( and more shopping
Keywords: Microsoft, Windows 10, October update, apartment, SHA, shampoo, fragrance free, allergens
Especially in the day and age of security breaches, you have to be able to rely on your vendors. Windows is so bad I've now fully disabled all anti-virus activity, as the amount of computing power that is "absorbed" by the hooks Microsoft Defender has built into the system can slow you down - for instance when backing up or doing a network file transfer - by 40 or 50 %.
I know Microsoft, in years past, has been walking a tightrope between parsing files to facilitate the Federal Government's security requirements, and parsing files to support using your data for its own commercial purposes, and providing a reasonable performce of its operating systems. When I see the new update, after its introduction, removed entire file strutures, there aren't many causes I can think of except for Microsoft's data gathering attempts - after all, Microsoft deperately tries to get you to use your Microsoft mail address as a login, and that means everything you have on, and connected to, that computer is accessible to Microsoft - using their mail address implicitly means you allow them access to every file and network operation you have. Microsoft's Cloud is now an integral part of their operating system, and that means the operating system can move files to the cloud all by itself, and if you want to know what Microsoft can do with files in its cloud, just read the terms and conditions. That is, you see, when Microsoft decided reading files on your computers wasn't legally sustainable, and led to massive amounts of negative publicity, the legal solution was to "provide" you with a means to store or temporarily store your stuff in their cloud - in Microsoft's server world, it can do anything it wants with your data.
While I am looking forward to living in my own apartment again - haven't lived in one since Manhattan - life was getting a bit complicated when my landlord, whose house I share, decided to move into his parent's house. But as it now turns out, a lodger there unexpectedly upped sticks, so I think by the end of the year, barring a pleasant surprise from the Seattle Housing Authority, I'll head over there too. That way, they can fix this place up, redo kitchens and bathrooms, make ready for a new rental. I have no clue how long it is going to take SHA, it's been over a year, so fingers and legs crossed a few more months will do it.
In my quest to reduce chemicals on my skin as much as possible (doctor's advice), I had been looking for fragrance free hair gel for a while. You'd think, in this day and gluten free age, that would be a readily available product, but no - 98% of the hair products "out there" have lots of chemicals. Noticed that last year, when looking for fragrance (and other additives) free shampoo and body wash. There, too, most "sensitive skin" products contain everything they're not supposed to. Even most of the types of the "Burt's Bees Baby" product I eventually found aren't fragrance and additive free, except for one. And those products that that do omit the nasty chemicals are, for the most part, expensive - the Burt's Bees stuff is in stores, but costs a lot more than it does online, and even there it is hardly cheap. Same for the gel I found, "Free & Clear", a lot more expensive than "ordinary" products (like, a factor five), and I can't yet tell you how well it works, I only just started using it (I think I used too much this morning, my hair feels like cemented). It occurred to me we should start selling these things, at reasonable prices, to young people, so they get in the habit of looking after their bodies better, and learn what to look for - now, you go to low allergen products when the damage is done, which makes little sense. Most of these "free" products, after all, are horrendously expensive, and mostly aim at "fad" buyers with too much money, who would likely do best to listen to a doctor rather than a "practitioner".
November 25, 2018: Technologically, we are moving backwards
Keywords: Microsoft, Windows 10, October update, A/C, natural gas, heat pumps, heating efficiency, missionaries, technophobe, technology failure, political division
I thought the central heating boiler had died again, but thankfully a quick blow-and-suck with my new wet/dry workshop vacuum seems to have fixed things. I keep thinking these gas elements for what are, effectively, A/C units, are inefficient and expensive to run, I would have expected folks in the State of Washington, where there is an abundance of hydropower, to use heat pumps, rather than gas, which is largely imported from Canada. The State itself calculates heat pumps are cheaper to run than gas central heating - of course, once you have a heat pump, and you didn't have A/C before, you'll probably end up using both, and spending more overall. I could go on for hours, but, most importantly, if we want to get away from fossil fuel we must switch to electric powered technologies, then make sure we generate the electricity in a "clean" manner. This is not easy - wind power and solar power have a devastating long term effect on the environment - not in terms of creating pollution and poisons, but they change temperature management of the earth, without our having done any research on the long term effect.
If, indeed, American missionary John Allen Chau was carrying diseases to which the Sentinelese have no immunity, we should urgently begin making it clear to these misguided religious folk that bringing lethal diseases to uncontacted tribes is a prosecutable offense, especially if it involves paying local citizens to break the law. There is, especially, a need to officially determine his body must not be retrieved, this to make sure his relatives, organization, and friends, understand there is no support for what could be termed a form of genocide. Do please remember what the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores from 1491 did to the American Indian, in what can only be termed an unintended massacre - of some eight million indigenous peoples, largely by bringing diseases they had no resistance to. In my view, people like Chau are religious fanatics and mentally ill, and should be treated as such.
It is somewhat amazing to see how many people - from missionaries to refugees - usurp rights they feel they have, for no reason that I can see. When all is said and done, once some Christians and some Muslims (and seemingly, some Buddhists, viz. Myanmar) invoke their deity or religious leader, they no longer consider themselves bound by law - law, to all intents and purposes, is an agreement between people, not religions. Yes, law is fine, democracy is fine, but when religion is invoked, all this stuff is null and void. And as entire countries are controlled by religions, you can't always negotiate that. I find it highly confusing, and the level of polarization seems to be increasing - or maybe it always was, and I just did not pay attention, in my younger years. It is disappointing, the number of people in communities that look after themselves, not after the greater good. I am not sure where the dividing line is - I think it is an excellent idea to stop the migrants, if they're coming by the thousands (as they've been doing in Europe for years) they need to be discouraged. If their home country is unliveable they need to fix that, and coming over and using our resources without asking or approval is not really on the cards. We have plenty of indigent folks of our own, and our social support system isn't geared to adding more mouths to feed. We must understand that, for each pair of "migrants", there will be children, something a lot of people seem to think they have a right to create. We must understand many of those migrants believe in religions that prohibit birth control, a system put in place in the Middle Ages so religious communities could grow larger and stronger. You can see how backward we really are when the European heads of state manage physical meeting several times a week, for quite a long time, when we have spent so much time and money creating infrastructure and tools to make physical travel to meet to discuss completely unnecessary. You may think this a strange diversion, but a missionary invading another country, and a prime minister using an airplane to conduct negotiations, are both vestiges of an era long gone, and in this day and age, very counterproductive.
December 2, 2018: Lot of upheaval for December..
Keywords: SHA, apartment hunt, retirement communities, Brexit, U.K., Theresa May, Sleep Number Bed, Sleep Number Corporation, asylum seekers
The limbo kind of continues - waiting to see when my landlord decides the "new" house is ready for occupation, and waiting to hear from the Seattle Housing Authority.. There actually isn't an issue with either of those "futures", I just wish I had a little more of a schedule - I especially don't like the propect of moving in the middle of winter, and there is always the possibility SHA will come through a week after the initial move. Actually, maybe once I have my move date, I can call them and see if they "know anything". I've not done that so far, as I don't have dates, and thus can't give anyone meaningful information. But I would like to finish the whole thing off and move into an apartment of my own.
Just whining, I really shouldn't complain. It is just that there is a bunch of stuff I can't (or don't feel comfortable to) do, in shared accomodation, and I would like to get on with my life. This has always felt like an intermediary episode, in a suburbia that has little to offer me, while recovering from the almost-bankruptcy that overwhelmed me after 2008, and the cancer recovery after 2010. Looking over my finances, I've fully "recovered" there - in quotes, because I've only got emergency money stashed away, but at least that will now let me buy what I need so I can move. Most importantly, my credit is now all clean, debts paid or removed, no (more) derogatories, so I can move on. I had always intended to move to a city when I got older - I have seen older folks move into newly built retirement communities in the middle of nowhere, or sit in a house in suburbia, where there isn't a support infrastructure, making themselves fully independent on their children for help and support, which isn't a good way to endear yourself. Nor is getting to the point where you have to get the bi-weekly shuttle to Safeway with the other old folk really that good or enjoyable. Better to live in a larger city with an elder support infrastructure, a building with staff, and shops you can walk to. Seriously. The pic to the left is a street scene in Ballard - an abundance of available Car2Go vehicles, like the Mercedes pictured, within easy walking distance of an SHA apartment building, should even make it possible for me to let my SUV go, and not worry about insurance, gas, registration and what have you.
So my UK Brexit prognosis is that Mrs May's compromise will hold, the Brits will grudgingly and noisily agree with what's been decided behind their backs, and discover that if you are not in an agreed cooperative with your massive neighbour life will become harder, more expensive, and very messy indeed. The impact on the Brits that have moved to the EU will be significant - mind you, many, if not most, of the Brits that live in Europe have swapped their British citizenship for citizenship of the countries they live in. My own Brit expat acquaintances and friends, in the Netherlands and France, have all taken local citizenship. The British government is not really aware that, for Brits to forsake their citizenship, there had to be some major soul searching and disappointment going on. You can't be British without Brits, and for the English establishment not to understand they've swapped hundreds of thousands of staunch Brits for the ability to stop "refugees" - something no nation has been able to do - is pretty stupid. I am putting refugees in quotation marks because I find it hard to believe that the hordes of asylum seekers that come to Europe, the United States and Australia are truly persecuted people. What they know about these regions is that once you somehow force or slither your way in, you are given a place to live, and money to live on - something that happens nowhere else on the planet. Why do they not go to that other rich nation, Japan? Because they have a language nobody speaks or can read, and if you somehow get there, as an asylum seeker, you are locked up, and very few asylum claims are honoured there (the link goes to the Japan Times). Clearly, this "migrant" was put on the road by a human smuggler, nothing less, the rest may just be an excuse the migrant cobbled together. That mother-of-five who was teargassed with three of her daughters at the Mexican border (where were the other two?) has to have been sold a false bill of goods by someone to leave her home - did she have a job? - and trek 4,000 miles, apparently without husband, to go live in the United States. She thought, apparently, that she could just walk across the border and put in an asylum claim. This is a joke, people, and I just can't fathom that all these folks are persecuted peoples. Same in Europe - rivers of mostly Muslim people, many from countries were there is no war, all claiming persecution. The latest is Iranians, renting boats on the French coast, to smuggle themselves into the UK. Things must be pretty bad out there, but if you've got thousands of dollars to pay to people smugglers, maybe you ought to pool your money and overthrow your government. And why does not the government at the point of origin arrest those people smugglers? And jail them? There must be a big, fat, money trail...
Apparently, the folks that sell the Sleep Number Bed have a clause in their policies that allows them to record biometric data from their customers, a clause you agree to when you buy one of their beds, which is controlled by a mobile app, itself likely allowing data collection. Sleep number have full control, as you can only buy their product from them, so buying one of their beds ties you into a contract that lets them do anything they like with you, and in your home. Important to understand is that their terms and conditions allow them full surveillance of anywhere you have installed one of their products - their bed, after all, connects to their computer networks and servers via their app you install. And their terms let them add surveillance technologies that may not be installed today - why would you mention recording in your terms if you cannot do so, and have no intention to? A quick search in patents.google.com shows that predecessor Select Comfort Corporation filed or was assigned some 94 patents, 59 of which were assigned to Sleep Number Corporation. U.S. Patent US20160100696A1 stipulates the Sleep Number Bed's controller can retrieve recorded sleeper data from the cloud, and compare that with the current sleep pattern - data that obviously could onlyh be retrieved from the cloud if the Sleep Number controller sent it there in the first place. Proof enough, and "data" can be anything, including video the bed takes of you.
December 10, 2018: Is "getting used to" a form of addiction?
Keywords: tapering off, medication reduction, habit forming, changing doctors, rheumatology, supersonic vehicle, vitamins, supplements, metabolism, working out
So you have to figure out if you're doing the right thing, then find a rheumatologist you can talk to and build a relationship with, then find out if the new doctor is willing to contemplate a different treatment method, and then, finally, do it, and see if she "tunes in" to where you are. None of this is easy, not if you've been seeing doctors and being treated for over fourty years, in six or seven countries on three continents.
The development of a 1,000 mph vehicle, Bloodhound SSC, has finally been shelved. An additional 25 million Pounds Sterling couldn't be raised, and so the project was shut down. I thought the entire idea was cockamamie, the technology development involved (which included building a track in South Africa) horrendous, and I could never understand what benefits this vehicle would have - if you consider even Concorde had to be shelved, supersonic cars aren't going to be driving folks to the shops in Shanghai anytime soon. I always thought that even if they'd managed to build this thing, chances of the lone driver getting killed in the eventual attempt were pretty good. But then I didn't think this noisy realtor would make it to the White House, either, so you can take that any way you want to. I just didn't think that a fighter pilot developing a useless car at enormous cost is really what we need...
There is an increasing understanding that vitamins, supplements, probiotics, and what-have-you, actually don't play a part in improving our health. The Guardian article linked here does a good job of explaining it, but for completeness' sake, the body, when nourished properly, will make all of the various components our organism needs quite successfully on its own. And if something is lacking, like calcium, or vitamin D, or thyroid hormone, that should be established by running tests, and having a doctor figure out why something is missing. I have no thyroid hormone production, because they had to take out my cancerous thyroid, some years back. So I take thyroid hormone tablets, and my endocrinologist frequently orders blood tests and then adjusts my medication "as needed" - there isn't an interactive self regulating thyroid hormone pump, as yet, even in the land of diabetes the pump is a new thing, for those who can use it. We manufacture and take huge amounts of osteoporosis medication, but as medicine stands, today, stuff like Fosamax actually barely works, and calcium supplements, as it turns out, mostly leave us as quickly as we ingest them. I know from my own experience, having taken a bisphosphonate for over ten years to combat my steroid induced osteoporosis, that the medication did not add a huge amount of bone mass to my skeleton (although, truthfully, I have no way of knowing what would have happened if I had not taken the bisphosphonate). I do know that the bone density scans taken since I stopped the medication, eight years ago, do not show an appreciable difference - likely, my regular workouts in the gym (mostly lifting weights and walking) keep my skeleton "in calcium".
So the supplements and medications that are supposed to improve your health actually do not. In a nutshell, your health takes care of itself, provided you "eat right", get exercise, get a modicum of sunlight, and sufficient rest. There's no "heart health" - there is no "unhealthy heart" - there are heart defects and illnesses, but those you need to take to a doctor, not the vitamin counter. It is a good idea to monitor yourself - blood pressure, temperature, heart rate, at regular times, and maintain a database or spreadsheet you can use to compare values. That is the value of Fitbits and other health monitoring tools - monitor your metabolism over time, doing workouts that bring your heartrate up to a particular point may be benefical for athletes, but for the ordinary person, they have no value. They don't make you healthier, nor do they make you live longer. In fact, if you're one of those fanatical workout types, you may end up with a sculpted well formed body, but you'll pay the price, later in life, when you slow down and confuse your metabolism.
December 16, 2018: Freefloating through Christmas, hopefully
Keywords: rheumatology, methotrexate, ALS, family, Medco, pen injectors, biosimilar
After replacing a couple of bulbs at the back of my SUV twice, I have finally (...) figured out it wasn't the bulbs, or the mount, but the insert fitting, which has two copper slider contacts that, over time, bent a bit. Sometimes they connected, sometimes they did not. A screwdriver and a gentle push was all it took... That means I don't have to install the LEDs-with-resistors I bought to fix the problem - a godsend, because I haven't figured out how to identify the wires I need to put the resistor across - those bulbs are dual-filament, and there is a single cable tree that serves all of the lamps in the taillight assembly. What remains is the license plate lamp, which I noticed is flickering - but while it quit freezing, it has been raining most days, good for agriculture, but I am not lying on my back behind the car removing the assembly in the rain.
My sister is thankfully keeping in touch with our dying cousin, struck down only a few years into his retirement by ALS, a.k.a. Lou Gehrig's disease, for which no cure exists. Deterioration is slow but sure, a grim reaper story if ever there was one. As I am having to move any day now I can't afford to fly to Europe to visit him, which I had intended to do, but then my landlord announced his move, and that means I have to move. I have money set aside for the SHA apartment move, but an additional move, with the possibility of the moves being close to each other, kinda cleans me out. Nothing you can do..
My medication changeover is an ongoing story - just now, I saw my injectable methotrexate is being shipped. Curious, as a few years and two rheumatologists ago, my doctor wanted to put me on injectable methotrexate, and we subsequently found out there was a drug shortage, and (then) Medco could not supply. I moved on to a different medication, but now find it is available, and so I am taking that plunge. Methotrexate, both an arthritis treatment and (in different strengths) a chemotherapy agent - that was why, when there was a shortage, what was available would be reserved for cancer treatment. But as it now seems my stomach is really not happy with the oral version, I've managed to get approved for methotrexate. Curious - Humira, at around $15,000 per 90 days, doesn't need insurance approval, while injectable methotrexate, at around $31.68 for a 117 day supply, does (in Europe, Humira has lost its patent protection, and that led to an 80% price reduction - in the UK, the National Health Service is replacing Humira with a "biosimilar", which is expected to lead to a UK-wide savings of between 300 and 400 million dollars). Go figure. One thing I do notice is that self-injecting is not hugely popular, in the United States (and, to be fair, elsewhere, I assume), and what with the advent of the pen injectors - for those not familiar, most injectables now come in an injector like the ones you've seen on TV for Epipen - the number of people using syringes will only have decreased. When I first began taking biologics, some twenty years ago, they came with an ordinary syringe, which a nurse taught me to use - all I can say is that I don't at all mind going back to syringes, the spring loaded pen injectors "explode" a short needle into your tummy or thigh, and they always hurt more than a needle prick does.
Come to think of it, I once helped a girlfriend over her needle phobia by having her inject me with my medication. It hurt - she bent the first needle going in my leg, and we had to do it again, but the second attempt was fine, and the next day she could go to the hospital lab and get her dreaded blood test...
December 24, 2018: Global warming isn't about the tailpipe
Keywords: pod coffee, TRU, Senseo, espresso, global warming, Poland, climate conference, Amazon, fertility, procreation
The housemates having moved, I've got my kitchen paraphernalia out of storage, which led to my being able to try this TRU pod coffee maker I found cheap on Ebay some time ago. The Philips / Douwe Egberts Senseo pods and pod machines never made it in the United States, even though other systems, like the K-cup and Nespresso pods did. For reasonably priced Senseo pods in bulk I ended up buying from a UK supplier, but I knew there are refillable plastic pods, which I ended up ordering from Amazon Germany. With the Espresso roast fine grind La Llave coffee I recently found in a supermarket, I am much surprised at the quality and strength of the coffee - and this TRU unit has a setting combination that lets me brew a very strong dark foamy mug of coffee. Magic. I think in general coffee systems you have to clean and maintain after each use just don't cut it with Americans, with the exception of the affluent type that buys a real espresso machine, but I am not someone willing to spend $300 to $500 on a coffeemaker, which then spends much of its time keeping hot water under pressure while not being used. This TRU does need a couple of minutes to heat its single shot of water, so is frugal, for as long as you remember to turn it off after your two morning cuppas.
What with Christmas a few days away, I've had to get prezzies and things ready early, as friends, in the middle of moving, have been haring back and forth between their parents' new home, where someone has been taken ill, and their parents' old home they are moving into. A lot of upheaval for them in the already busy month of December - while I had some legal things going on, and with all that it isn't clear which house I'll be in, come February, all that's clear is that things are all moving out a bit, time wise. Not an issue, just upheavelish.
The more I think about global warming, the more I am absolutely convinced none of the formal efforts to control and improve the environment will have much of an effect. You just can't reduce energy consumption - which is the only way to control what goes into the environment - while continuing to breed. I think about the environment every time I walk to the gym, and at the Starbucks on the corner see eight or ten cars idling while they wait their turn on the coffee line. Why would I concern myself with the environment when people think it is OK to idle a 5 litre V-8 while waiting for a coffee to brew in one of the most inefficient machines ever invented, operated by two scantily dressed women in a shoebox, and the State Government thinks it is OK for this pollution to happen, while spending a billion tax dollars to improve the Orca habitat and remove the dams that reduce the salmon's ability to procreate in their ancient spawning grounds?
You cannot seriously suggest that a United Nations organized climate conference causes representatives from some 200 countries, including support staff, to fly into Poland from all over the globe? Take into consideration that the optimal number of decision makers in a meeting is six to eight, beyond that number most time is wasted on logistics and negotiations, and the statistical chance of agreement goes inverse to the number of participants. We have the tools to enable all of these people to communicate with one another, and use vote lists and mathematical software to arrive at decisions, and those tools cannot be used if you stick all of these people in a conference room - if only because there is not enough talk time. The conference ended with a Polish representative, Poland was the host, dancing on a table. Surely, that is a waste of energy, and completely adverse to the fact that no climate conference has ever led to any climate improvement. I will say that for as long as most of us sit in some kind of transportation in traffic jams on our way to and from work, every day, pollution is not a resolvable concern. It isn't just cars - subways, trains, buses, and airplanes all have traffic jams. Your rush hour flight from A to B is going to sit on the tarmac with engines running, waiting for its takeoff slot, because there are too many people taking, ultimately, unnecessary tips.
We must stop making babies, and Amazon must stop moving thousands of workers to the most congested areas in Virginia and New York, without a reason for them to be there. We must curtail growth, at least in the overbuilt areas, and migrants, in particular, must stop making babies - as I write this, a Nigerian woman on board one of those "rescue" ships is being taken off, with the baby she had on the Libya beach while boarding. That is completely totally moronic - I guess the idea was to time it to have this baby on EU soil, so the authorities could not deport the mother. You can't make babies if you cannot afford to feed them, and no, it is not a religious duty, you do not need children. I know we cannot, PC correct, tie women's tubes, or men's vas deferens, to untie them once they have proven they can sustain a family, and get a permit from the authorities, so you think of something, but we have to do stop this craziness. If the Chinese had not implemented the one child policy, all those years ago, they'd be spilling over the edges of their country by now. It is possible - but hard to prove - that China's one child policy, and India's lack thereof, is the cause of India now surpassing China in polluting the environment - see here.
January 7, 2019: Shopping, moving, changing
Keywords: cleaning, chemotherapy, Medicare, heat pump, bamboo, recyclables, Brita filter
Running around cleaning and clearing up, I have fallen a bit behind in blogging, especially since there is so much else going on. I didn't go to the gym for almost a week, while I took my heat pumps out of storage and tested them, this because I had never had a chance to test their heating capability in the middle of winter, which involves turning off the gas central heating. I've now got one of them running on one side of the house, boosting the gas system, just to see what that does to the energy bill on the whole. It will take a few weeks to get a good average, but with a bit of January frost I'll get an idea of their performance.
I mentioned coffeemakers and pod coffee, of the espresso variety, so I went and got a Brita filter - to some extent, because I found a box of unused filters in my storage. The housemates used well water, but as the containers that lived in were never cleaned or sterilized, I decided to go back to Brita - filters and jugs I've actually been using since I lived in London, that would have been the late 'seventies, mostly to get rid of the faint whiff of chlorine big city water has. Mind you, I visited a ladyfriend in London, a few years ago, whose Brita filter jug had a greenish rim, so it isn't necessarily the be-all-end-all if you don't have a spare so you can stick one in the dishwasher. The "new" Brita jug disassembles, so it is easier to clean. The filter jug I got at Wal-Mart wasn't as expensive as the one you see in the picture here, taken at Wincofoods. Tasteless clear water, what more can one ask for. There is a cheaper version, but this slimline jug has an electronic filter usage indicator, so I'll know when the filter is due for a change.
In the interim, I am cleaning, especially some floors and work surfaces that haven't had a proper (bleach) cleaning in years. And I am settling into my "new" medication - it has only been two weeks, at this point, but I was on biologics for some eighteen years, without ever a real break to see what that would do. This may sound ill advised to you, but how do you find out what effect the biologic has if you don't, at some point, stop that treatment? Thankfully, my new rheumatologist finds that an acceptable argument, and was actually quite pleased when I suggested to switch to an injectable disease modifyer for immune system conditions, when previously I'd been on an oral form of this medication, together with NSAIDS. The only "problem" is that I've been dispensed a higly concentrated solution (methotrexate is otherwise a potent chemotheraphy agent), which I get to self-inject in small weekly doses, and getting 0.6 ml out of a tiny vial without aspirating lots of air is a bit of a skill, must say. Previous medications I self-injected came in much large vials, with much larger syringes, this is just a completely new experience, and it is a bit of a job to get the dose right, not to put too much air in the vial (you get a small fountain when you retrieve the syringe), and keep the stopper sterile for the next aspiration. Methotrexate seems to be hard to get - it took a couple of weeks, unusual for Express Scripts, and turns out to only be available (in this dosage) from.. Australia! Interestingly, after Express Scripts hiccupped a bit, they were able to supply the medication, but not the syringes, which I ended up (thanks to Safeway) getting directly from a Medicare supplier. Shows you how popular self administered chemo is, in this country..
Other than that, not a huge amount of "news" - what with the moves on hold, and so far no word from the Seattle Housing Authority, I am more or less "marking time", as my ballerina used to say. Nothing wrong with that, I have plenty of chores, and as the housemates have taken much of their stuff, I am buying some new household items I had on the list for my "big" move anyway, and had saved up for. I had, for instance, not been able to properly test the heat cycle of my heat pumps, in sustained winter operation, in the house, rather than a room, so that is now ongoing. That'll give me a chance to calculate the cost of heating using these units, my previous heat pumps, in Virginia, were whole-house 50,000 BTU units, but an older technology. These Edgestar units have much more capacity per kilowatt, although the issue with heat pumps, should you feel tempted, is always that they don't produce high heat, but medium heat at a larger air volume, so they are relatively noisy. As I go through the stuff I have in storage, as I am going to have to move that sooner or later, I come across all sorts of things I didn't know I had - mostly household items, from cooking pots to water filters - that I am putting to use replacing the housemates' stuff. I've switched from the electricsl stove top to my induction cooker, faster, more efficient, but that means having to dig up my own cooking pots, which are compatible with induction cooking. There is my cast iron enameled Dutch oven, which I really like to cook in (no chemicals as there is no non-stick surface), my electric rice cooker, which I have to figure out quantities of (I am really fussy with my rice), my pressure cooker, bought especially for induction, and there is cleaning all of the kitchen implements and cutlery, which haven't been out of their boxes in years. What with the rent going up and the dinner stuff I need, I am spending extra money, but then this is why I had saved some, so...
One thing I didn't "keep" were plates and cups and saucers, don't recall why, so it is time to get some. I occurred to me that many, if not most, of these things are available made of bamboo, admittedly factory made, but mostly process, shaped and formed using steam and hydraulic pressure, not chemicals. Add to this that bamboo grows at incredible rates, and you'll appreciate bamboo kitchen implements can be eco-friendly as well as pretty - and recyclable! Bamboo actually has a tensile strength that can exceed that of iron compounds, and vastly exceeds the strength of aluminium, so you're not losing capability there. Add to this something I recently realized, namely that woods can be maintained, cleaned and kept flexible using vegetable oils, put two and two together, and you can use those oilive oil cooking spreay cans to maintain wooden furniture and wooden cooking implements, which can dry out. Olive oil, after all, is perfectly safe and healthy and edible, so a bamboo plate, rinsed in the dishwasher, and cleaned with olive oil, should be terrific. I've found sets of "disposable" bambo plates (10 for 13.99, inclusive of shipping, no tax) that should fit the bill, so I am trying those out, see how long they'll last. One thing they can't do is break...
January 29, 2019: Still catching up
Keywords: Medicare, medication changes, SHA, pistol license, clearing up, back ailments, orthopedic surgery, Andy Murray
I can only apologize for my tardiness with the blog update - simply too many things to write about, too many things I don't want to publicize, and I am not pushing myself enough to fulfill my promises. Probably procrastinating a bit, or a bit much, but the mail shook me awake this week, with (finally) a Carry Permit, and an application renewal for the Seattle Housing Authority - and that is important, my number is up. So now I have more stuff to do, but a different priority lineup. Then I needed to find an eye doctor, ophtalmologist, and that was not as easy as just calling someone. One ophtalmologist, recommended by my optometrist, didn't answer the phone - on a second attempt, they didn't return the message I left. The receptionist at another office didn't think I was talking to the right specialist, and the fourth I called was just in the process of moving to a different practice. I then managed to talk the practice assistant into checking which of their other M.D.'s had the specialism I was looking for (my rheumatologist had asked me to see and ophtalmologist), and that is how I eventually got an appointment. This is all pretty amazing, considering how overstocked the region is with medical practices, this isn't the first time I am not able to register with a specialist - I think lots of doctors don't like Medicare, and many aren't fully aware there are corporate types like myself who have enhanced insurance plans.
My landlord and his wife have returned from their family affairs, having laid his Father to rest. There is always a higher incidence of deaths in December, though this was unexpected, this soon after their move.
With me alone in the house, I am busy doing stuff I didn't get a chance to do, for one reason or another, and I should get on with clearing some of the broken and no longer needed stuff away to recycling, it's been sitting in the garage for weeks, I just didn't want to load up the SUV in the rain and iffy weather, but the sun is back, so I don't have a real excuse. I am just not very good at waiting and taking things slow.
Reading the reporting about poor tennis pro Andy Murray having to likely can his tennis career due to his hip malfunction, I can say I am sorry for him, but he's had a good innings, stellar career, and he shouldn't stay narrow focused on Wimbledon, or anything that could increase his level of injury. I had decided not to comment on this, but if there is anything I have experience of, it is the skeleton, joints, bone damage, though I am not, and have never been, an athlete. But I've had to look at this on a number of occasions, what medicine to take, whether or not to have reconstructive surgery, which I've done once and declined once, and then when I saw Andy decided to have hip surgery in Australia, I couldn't help but wonder why. As you can read in the linked Guardian article, that type of surgery doesn't normally get an athlete back in the game. I recall my ballerina wife, having surgery on both feet by a world renowned surgeon in Amsterdam - while she recovered sufficiently to get back on "toes", and the stage, she was forever in pain. Lots of people have the lower back surgery I almost did, but never get back to 100% functioning - whatever that is, as none of us get younger. My back is functioning well, but the lumbar region pain slowly gets worse, and it isn't really likely that locking more discs (my ankylosing already did a number on the joints between pelvis and vertebrae) will make the pain go away, I can work out at the gym every other day, lift weights, stuff, so there likely is not a lot that can be achieved surgically. It isn't broken, if you like, and so there isn't a lot to really fix.
February 5, 2019: We were watching other people's winter, but then..
Keywords: thyroid hormone, endocrinology, snow, carry permit, White House, SHA, housing application, HUD, heat pumps
All in all it has been a mild winter, though the weather forecast warns for some "lowland snow" in the next couple of days - I am just a bit cold because of my thyroid medication, of which my endocrinologist increased the dosage. They like to have you take a slight "overdose" of thyroid hormone, this to lower the changes of a wayward leftover cancer cell activating, and starting the thyroid cancer cell growth again. I just follow orders, but the higher dose has effects on circulation and heart rate, and they're not really enjoyable. Then, you just wait until your next blood test, when hopefully the medics will be happier with the numbers, and my circulation can return to some semblance of normalcy. Having your body go through cycles you have no control over, and that as a "normal" state of being, isn't something you ever get used to. It is all well and good to work on fine tuning your medication dosage, but the number of months it takes to arrive at a "stable" reading is never easy, especially since you have to keep doing it.
Ah, there it is. The snow I mean. Amazing - weather forecasters said a couple of days ago there'd be snow Sunday evening, and they were spot on. Surprising especially since we're in a sort of trough, up against the mountains, and sometimes that means we get completely different weather from Seattle proper, which is only 20 miles or so away. The snow you see in the picture fell in about four hours, and then it started freezing, thankfully I don't have to go anywhere tomorrow, did what shopping I needed this morning, and threw in an hour at the gym, hope it melts, we'll see. Should have some time to manage my long delayed gun cleaning, tomorrow, now that I found the gun oil that kind of got lost in the tool kit. And then I need to find a convenient firing range, really the primary reason to get a carry permit in the first place. While Washington State really doesn't require a permit to go to the range, it is easier not to have to worry about carrying a loaded firearm and such - in Virginia, carrying a loaded firearm is legal when you're going to the range, here, it is not, meaning you have to unload and then reload when you're there. Not a big deal, but it is just easier if you don't have to worry about it. So no, I am not one of those packing heat wherever he goes - besides, it is not clear to me, from the Washington State law books, whether you can leave a firearm in an locked, parked car. That is, you can't if you don't have a permit, but I am not clear that you even can if you do.
I've pretty much gotten to the point where I completely ignore any news coming from the White House, or the Fed in general. This is unusual, if you consider how important the gummint was in my work, not to mention having an office in easy reach of said government. But what comes out of the White House today seems have less to do with running the country, than with endless megalomania. I don't recall every seeing such an allergy to negotiating in our leadership.
Not knowing what will happen when is not my favourite state of being, but my number came up with the Housing Authority, so an apartment may be in sight, I rushed the paperwork off to them. I am reeling off the rest of the bucket list, buying some of the stuff I have avoided getting for as long as I didn't need it, and getting my kitchen tools out of hock, now that the housemates have taken theirs to their "new, old" house. Started cooking in earnest, again, too, now that I am in nobody's way in the kitchen, and I should swap out the heat pumps next week, so I know the stored unit heats fine, too. In the interim, I will give the dishwasher a thorough clean - there was black mould in the unit (not caused by yours truly), and repeated cleaning cycles with an antibacterial compound have not completely killed this stuff, which is nothing if not persistent. What I had not done - stupid me - is use the hottest longest cleaning cycle, which, now that I have increased the temperature of the hot water tank, may help. Just did not think of it. Add some bleach....
February 18, 2019: We do not normally have "winter".....
Keywords: snow, heat pumps, cold, 4 wheel drive, gun license, CPL
I had not anticipated Old Man Winter arriving late - not only is there a foot or so of snow, but it started freezing in earnest - as I write this, 10:30pm, the temperature is down to 18 Fahrenheit, a.k.a. -8 centigrade. That's cold, peeps. I de-snowed the SUV, but wasn't able to completely de-ice the windshield, something I guess I'd better re-commence with the engine running. Thankfully the big V-8 produces copious heat.... (as you can see from the display, it got even colder - 8 Fahrenheit is really cold, like -14 centigrade, with ice underneath the snow). Never did an update for the blog, as endless pictures of masses of snow would surely bore you to death, suffice it to say that over one Sunday, the amount of snow was more than the normal annual snowfall in the region.
I can't tell you how happy I am I got that Durango, all those years ago. With high clearance, with the skid plates that protect the engine and transmission, all wheel drive with high and low gearing, oversize real snowtires, antilock brakes, self locking differential, I've been able to get around and do the necessary, when local friends have, until yesterday, not been able to get any of their cars out of the driveway. I should compliment myself with the maintenance I've done myself, and the overhaul of the cooling system and the A/C that are both working well. I'll probably sell this thing as soon as I move to the city, using Car2Go is likely to save me money in the long run.
While I had really never tested my Edgestar heat pump in real cold, it has no problem producing heat in the house - gone are the days that heat pumps couldn't use air at or below freezing. This particular unit gets its compressor air from outside, so it really is producing some 67 degrees from that 18 degree outside air. From what I paid for these things that is pretty amazing, and clearly, Asian consumer technology is a ways ahead of what we manage here. It isn't that I didn't know this, but proving it is kinda par for the course, and with heat pumps, you can't really test unless you have "real" weather, the electronics only activate heat or cooling with the right ambient temperature. Well, that works.... (that is, down to 8 Fahrenheit, when the compressor could no longer produce sufficient warm air. Good thing to know).
Not a lot else to report, hence the pause between postings - some family stuff going on (back in Europe) that I really can't report on, not without breaching people's privacy, I'd love to be able to go over and visit some of the affected members, fingers crossed. You deal with deaths, the expected and the unexpected, but euthanasia - legal in The Netherlands - isn't something I've ever given a great deal of thought, yet there it is - preplanned, announced, demise.
Now I need to find myself a shooting range, locally, can't really carry a gun and not be proficient with it, haven't shot at a range for quite a while. Especially with monovision contacts, you need to practice, practice, practice. I don't mean I am planning to run around shooting miscreants, but if you do "pack heat" and you end up in a situation you need to draw, you need to be secure. Besides, I meant to adjust the rear sight, and haven't yet done even that. For those who think it is exciting to carry a gun, a couple comments. First of all, there are places that don't allow guns, so you need to check when you go somewhere. I was checking out the new "Sprouts" farmer's market next to my gym, and they have a "no guns" sign on the door. The WA State AG has it there isn't a law that makes that sign valid. While you can stop folks from "Open Carry" - carrying a firearm visibly, legal in many states including Washington, the Concealed Pistol License has been made legal in this state by making it an exception on regular gun laws. Which leads to it being lawful to carry a licensed concealed gun in an airport, but not beyond security, which is under Federal Statute. Same in the Post Office, which is Federal. All I am saying is that there are a thousand rules, and you're expected to know them by heart, and follow them. And then - I'll expand on that at some point in the future - there is the issue of drawing a gun, and using it for self defence. Many of those situations will land you in court, and then it is not up to you whether you could or couldn't.
The whole thing made it clear to me that West Coast states, different from the East Coast, still have some "frontier" elements to them. Many places in the USA you have to go take a gun proficiency course (I actually did when I was an NRA member back in Virginia, and used their HQ range), jump through hoops, have a triple digit security check done and take an oath in court to get a license, which, in some places, can take months, especially if you're not a U.S. citizen. Here - no tests or classes, just fingerprints, FBI check, two weeks (but then I have a clean record in the Nation's Capital, for professional reasons, which not everybody can say). So yes, it's a bit of a Frontier State, and it does feel a bit weird to strap a holster on and go shopping.
February 27, 2019: Tidying up, in all ways
Keywords: housing, SHA, IRS, dashcam, Blackberry, medical expenses
The year is well under way, so to speak - my application with the housing people is being processed, I managed my tax return truly quickly, as the Fed has increased the standard deduction to the point I no longer need to laboriously calculate my medical deduction. Only a couple of years ago you needed to really come up with the gory detail, breaking out lab cost, pharmacy cost, doctor's charges, transportation, and much more, but that, at least for me, is all gone. So the return went off, and was accepted by IRS Fresno in - believe it or not - 20 minutes.
Of course, there's always something that breaks - this time, my Samsung phone, the one I use as dashcam / vehicle monitor in the car, occasionally won't turn on the camera when I start the Caroo Pro app. As that Samsung has been in dashcam use almost every day since February 2016, living in the vehicle in the dead of winter and they height of summer, there really is nothing wrong with it slowly dying, but that means getting a replacement, and I think the Caroo Pro app has disappeared from the Google store, and I doubt the install of a new handset will pull a copy of the app. Only one way to find out, and that was going to happen at some time or other, I suppose.
I had, for some time, wanted to get another refurbished Blackberry Priv, basically as a spare, I like that handset immensely, it works very well, is fast, super camera, excellent hires screen, so why not make the jump now, while they're still affordable around - found one for $150, hopefully it is as artfully refurbished as the vendor says, and as the last one was. Then, I'll have to find a new dashcam / OBD-II monitor app - that'll be interesting, with the Priv's high resolution camera with Schneider Kreuznach lens.. My cellular carrier kindly sent me a free nano-SIM, I guess they're happy with my 19 year custom - it's actually more, but they don't seem to count the predecessor, Voicestream. No matter.
It's been an expensive couple of months - not so much the Holidays, but the rent went up (partly my own doing) and I needed a number of expensive household items due to my landlord moving out, with all their gear. It isn't a big deal, I had a budget for my eventual move to Seattle proper, and those expenses just came a bit early. It is the time of year I need to get all of my medical checkups done, as well, and that is always an expensive excercise, especially since the deductible sits in the beginning of the year. Add to that my car insurance renewal, and you know what I am talking about. All in all, I've managed to clean up my finances, save a little money, albeit slowly, so I really have nothing to complain about. Even so, when I do my taxes, I see I've spent $7,530 on medical expenses, over the year - that's just over $20 a day. And this is with my super duper corporate insurance, which I guess I am lucky to have..
I especially shouldn't complain as I am, to all intents and purposes, housesitting this place - today, finally, months late, a workcrew arrived. Not that I am not paying rent, but it does not look like I am having to move out anytime soon, and I may be able to move to the landlord's new place, if that becomes necessary and this refurbishment is finished.
March 5, 2019: Finally, a bit of computering
Keywords: ADATA, Seagate, SSD, hard disk, terabyte, computing speed, HP Elitebook
So the little Intel drive, originally in an HP Elitebook, has done good service in my Toshiba, after being used extensively in the HP. That gave me the courage to try and find an affordable "full size" laptop SSD. Some due diligence led me to a 2TB Adata SU800, out there for $238. While what reviews I could find were often in favour of more expensive SSD's made by manufacturers who are mostly well known for the volumes they build, the previewers / testers used load of arguments to do with internal architectural drive constructs, such as the number of NAND gates in the design, but there is very little comparative information out there about the effect of an SSD on an integrated system. An SSD provides faster data transport, this is true, but this is hardly the only factor that matters. Windows 10 Pro, for instance, fully recognizes the SSD as such, even after a clone from a regular Seagate drive (kudos to Seagate's free cloning software!) - which reminds me, I need to check what the HP thinks of this drive. Right back..
Yes, indeed, my HP notebooks recognize SSD's, as they should some were originally fitted with them. This is part of the issue with SSD installs - if the PC or notebook isn't "SSD aware", the latter will revert to standard hard disk emulation, which works well, but slows things down. Secondly, the operating system should be SSD aware, older versions of Windows may not have all the bells and whistles - my carefully updated Windows 10 Pro is fully aware, and actually automatically replaces my automatic defragmentation routine with the new "SSD trim". This clears out unused memory on the SSD once a file has been deleted, which otherwise has to be done before a write, which takes time.
So all this stuff works, and we'll see how she holds up in use. An SSD isn't just a faster memory device, you see, its presence inside a PC or PC-architected computer will help with making operation more efficient. An SSD doesn't have electromechanical heads, which have to be moved from data field to data field, for instance - the PC is capable of reading multiple data points at the same time, but an ordinary hard disk can't do that. It can only move one head to one data point at a time, however many heads and platters it has. The latter reduce seek time, that is true, but it is still a (fast) single tasking device. And if the next data point is on another platter at another location, the whole thing needs to move. This takes energy, and costs time. None of that applies to an SSD, and I am hoping that my HP Elitebook will run cooler, and use fewer CPU cycles, I was not primarily concerned with speed, with the HP has plenty of, but it does, especially when ramping up in the morning, crank up the cooling when the CPU rolls over 50% load. An SSD could help here, but I'll need to see, over a period of time. So far, so good.
March 9, 2019: Tempo Doeloe
Keywords: Indië, Ton Aartsen, RIP, family, ALS, death
Cousin Ton, in The Netherlands, somehow contracted ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, and that killed him, unfortunately, in fairly short order. The family hoped he would hang in there for a while, deteriorating, but busy with a new exhibition. Last week, he took a sudden turn for the worse, and decided, together with partner and daughters, that enough was enough. I am quite sad, especially since I didn't get a chance to say goodbye, thinking I'd go over when I could find an affordable air fare. I should have probably gone during his last exhibition, a few weeks ago, when I would have been able to see much of my family, but didn't. Dumb. I sat with Ton's father, Teddy, after his last hart attack, in Jakarta, Indonesia, where the old colonial Navy pilot had retired to, but this time I didn't get the chance, and the money I had been waiting for wasn't available to me until Friday, literally hours before he died. My sister had warned me he was being sedated in palliative care, so I knew what was coming.
Tempo Doeloe, BTW, the headline for this piece, refers to the old colonial Netherlands East Indies, where so many of my relatives lived before WWII and Indonesian independence. Cousin Ton comes from one of those extended "Indo" families, a heritage he shares with many of my other relatives. Curiously enough, the non-colonial side of the family was naval, and ended up stationed in the colonies too. Judging from my Facebook feed, Ton was, in his final months, comforted and cared for amazingly by his partner Ank, and his daughters Flore and Aagje, who were with him, caring and loving, through the very last moments of his life - as I write, he lies in his artist's workshop, behind his partner's shop in Leeuwarden, where he will repose until they take him to his last resting place. Godspeed, cuz.
March 16, 2019: Jeez, Spring!
Keywords: ADATA, Seagate, SSD, HP Elitebook, methotrexate, immune system, dashcam, refurbished, mobile phone, Android
Finally sunny and warm, after a lot of cold, so beginning to clear out my landlord's broken bits is next on the list. I could not bring myself to do this during the cold weather - probably because it is not my priority, and the entire house redecorating project is very much on the long run now. Not that I mind, I am waiting for my SHA apartment, and now in my second stage approval. So helping with the clearing up is a good thing, and yesterday I walked, rather than drove, to the gym, I just didn't want to handle the cold.
I've not run comparative statistics on the SSD I installed, simply because this isn't a statistical excercise, I want to know how the SSD improves the system's overall functioning. I know the thing is fast to the point that an inadvertent mouse click moved an 8GB subdirectory into another subdirectory without any kind of a delay - voom, it was gone. Gone, in that I had no idea where it had absconded to - I was halfway into a recovery operation when a backup ran longer than expected, and I could see where it had moved. No data loss, then, but I'd never seen a large directory move that quickly. Amazing. I was working on a restore from the last backup, that morning, when I realized I hadn't lost the directory, it had just moved, quick as a flash.
In the meantime I am just about done with my semi-annual round of doctor visits, cancer checkup, loads of blood tests, and even though my doctors are happy, there are some changes to my circulation and heart rate I am not really happy with. They're hard to diagnose, because my thyroid hormone dosage changed at the same time I switched to an injected immune system suppressant, after 20 or so years of biologics. Three months isn't a really good measure of change, and my rheumatologist made reassuring noises about the workout pulse rate. The general consensus is for me to see my GP (which I am scheduled for anyway), and then a cardiologist, just to make sure. No symptoms, though, nobody seems very worried. We upped the methotrexate slightly, hoping that will help with the occasional arthritis discomfort, which sometimes wakes me up. And then the eye specialist, teeth cleaning, and I should do my annual "Wellness" visit, my health insurance folks actually give me a $50 gift card after, can't look a gift horse in the mouth.
In the process of changing my "car phone" - the cellphone I converted to an engine monitor-cum dashcam from an older Samsung to a less old Blackberry - learned an amazing amount of stuff about Android. One thing is that some phone manufacturer versions of Android work differently from other versions, and that 80% of the stuff Google installs on your Android handset has absolutely no function other than to collect your data. When I could not get the HERE WeGo app (the former Nokia GPS app) to run on one of my handsets, I activated Google Maps instead, as I needed a locator right then. That worked (well, I must add) but the installer activated half a dozen other Google apps, including setting all of the permissions to "on", that had absolutely no bearing on locator services. The net consequence would have been that all sorts of Google apps now reported their location, for no reason, and without any purpose. I eventually got HERE to run on another handset, but then spent a laborious hour de-activating the Google crap that had just been re-activated.
Having said that, I have long since turned away from "all things to all people". It is actually a lot cheaper to dedicate different cellphones to different tasks, not even all of them have to be new, either. You just have to spend time to figure out which phone is better at which task, and which phone needs the higest security. My primary is always with me, on my hip when away from home, on my desk when I am in my office, even better now that I have a wireless charging base for it, and that is, for instance, the only handset that has some of my financial provider apps. The handset I normally use for voice calls, for instance, does not have my contacts database, so the call provider can't mine phone numbers and email addresses. When I am not home - when I don't answer my "home phone" - it lives in the car, running engine, GPS and dashcam, using an app that, again, can't retireve any data from the handset, as there isn't any. Greenify turns off any apps I've stopped using - you can stop an app and log out, but that does not mean it is no longer running. That alone makes Greenify very useful - it tells me exactly what's refusing to turn off, and lets me force it off.. Etc.
March 22, 2019: Why is there false news?
Keywords: vegetarian, eye doctor, contact lenses, immigrants, fake news, mass murder, deluded activists, massacres
I am not a huge meat eater, but definitely not a vegetarian either - that young vegan vlogger being caught eating fish, then admitting that her doctors had told her she was destroying her health with her strict vegan diet, and she then continued to pretend she was still vegan. Smart that she listened to her doctors (other vegans will not), not so smart she lied to her followers. Especially a strict vegan who has, inadvertently, discovered her vegan ways were damaging her could do many other deluded folks with that eating disorder a power of good. No, we weren't created vegan, we're omnivore, and animal proteins our metabolism can process and use are a necessity. There are almost weekly reports of vegans almost killing their young children with their adopted diet, and going to jail, but as with fake news, their followers and adopters don't seem to believe those reports. Makes ya wonder, dunnit? The slab of meat on the left was discounted at Fred Meyer, a Kroger store I don't frequent, as they are fairly expensive, but this was a happy exception - over 3 lbs of steak for $12. Freezer is happy, and so is my Sharp multifunction oven, which I am now using again, since the housemates have moved.
Contact lenses are absolutely amazing, so you can probably imagine I was not hugely happy when my rheumatologist sent me to see an ophthalmologist - "just to be on the safe side" - who came to a swift conclusion that my days of wearing contacts 24/7 ("extended wear") are over. Looks like my skin (specifically, the insides of my eyelids) no longer tolerates those things. He also said I ought to consider glasses (the horror!), but if I had to, I should do daily disposables. So I'll head back to my optometrist and, with his help, sort all that out, it is what it is. My eyes are fine, there's no tissue or other damage, but with an impaired immune system it is better not to take risks. Eyes, please do remember, can't be replaced...
I am amazed, and somewhat perturbed, at the number of immigrants I come across, in this blue collar community, who simply don't bother to learn English. They seem to think that for as long as they can say "How much?" at Costco, and have a friend in their ethnic community who can help translate, they're fine. You know the sort of person - you say something to them, and they stare at you with these glazed eyes, unable to even utter the words "Can you explain what you mean?". It is somewhat unforgiveable, in my book - my hairdresser, who is Vietnamese, takes an "English as a second language" course at the local community college, free, something available in most, if not all, communities in the United States.
I am very sorry to have to say that if the good folks in New Zealand really thought they were safe, they were deluded. Terrorism, in all its forms, has spread across the globe, taking decades, but it gets everywhere. I recall leaving my US Air shuttle from New York to Washington on 9/11, seeing the attack on the WTC on one of the monitors in the terminal, and my first thought was "They got here too", remembering the Palestinian and Japanese terrorist attacks in Europe in the 1970s, when I was living there. The U.S. government had not felt it necessary to introduce the airport security we Europeans had rolled out across Europe after some lethal hijackings. The assassins could just board the aircraft, knives and all.
New Zealand was one of the last places that had not been hit with extremism, and I would begin by finding out who in New Zealand government fell down on the job. There has been plenty of terrorism in their neighbourhood, Australia and Indonesia, and it was only a matter of time until someone attacked New Zealand. I am sorry the prime minister felt it necessary to do this cutesy "having a baby in office" thing, but I am firmly convinced she made a mess of national security. No, it isn't the gun laws, the necessary surveillance of the population was not in place, here was an foreign extremist whose social media profile should have put him under surveillance, and someone in law enforcement must take responsibility for not taking a close look at a foreigner stockpiling guns. He knew he could, filed and got licenses, and a national security apparatus that doesn't even slightly investigate such a person isn't worthy of the name, it isn't like New Zealand could not hire in the necessary experts, from Israel, from the United States, from France, from Britain, the list is endless. To begin with, Prime Minister Ardern should admit her responsibility, and resign. Her replacement should be well versed in matters military, preferably with a good amount of overseas experience. Sure, change the law all you like, but please remember laws do not make you safe, only well trained people can.
March 28, 2019: Google "Play"?
Keywords: stomach, cramp, global warming, Android, OBD II, vehicle monitor, APK creation
Global warming is something you are confronted with every day - walk through a supermarket, look at what is available in terms of food, and you will understand that every supermarket stocks more food than it can sell. Researchers have looked at the food waste, and the problem there is that you can't get supermarkets to have less food on the shelves, because the consumer will - largely - go where the choice is greatest. There may be some nice eco-conscious folk who will be frugal, but take a run through the suburbs, and you see the assortment multiply, because the supermarkets have to work even harder, there, to bring in the trade, to places where you have to drive, you can't walk there. Part of my amazement is that they're adding supermarkets, this in an area where commercial development was at a standstill - within ten minutes' drive, I now have a Safeway, a Sprouts, a Trader Joe's, two QFC's, a Wal-Mart market, two Korean supermarkets, an Indian supermarket, a Hispanic supermarket, and a Fred Meyer. And I may have missed a couple I don't buy at.
I've not paid a lot of attention to Android as an operating system, at least, any more than I have to to be able to use my mobile devices, but the other day, when I replaced my older Galaxy (see February 27), I ran into an app that wouldn't transfer to my new handset. CaroO Pro, a clever vehicle monitoring app that makes your mobile act as a dashcam, as well, is no longer sold or supported. So I spent a week or so trying out some other apps from the Play Store, NONE of which worked. I mean, you'd think there might be one, two maybe, but no. After trying five or six, rejecting those you could not try out a full functionality before buying, I looked if there wasn't as way I could transfer CaroO Pro, but that either doesn't work at all, or it only works if you back up your phone to Google's Cloud, which I will not do out of privacy concerns. In the end, I found something called "APK Installer", which I figured wouldn't work, but which is supposed to turn an Android app into an installable app you can transfer to another handset - and back up to your PC archive drive.
Guess what - that did work, hurray!. CaroO Pro wouldn't run right on an Android Blackberry - which the Blackberry said was due to it having been written for an older version of Android - but it runs perfectly on my old Blü, which I bought reconditioned for not a lot of money, so is easy to dedicate to the car. In fact, the app runs better on the Blü than it did on the Galaxy - and the camera has better resolution, too. I had best repeat that using multiple mobile handsets for different purposes is a very good solution, for the price of an additional line and SIM card it isn't worth not doing it. The "all things to all people" principle that both Samsung and Apple seem to want you to adhere to makes little sense - yes, I can use my primary phone to run my fitness app, but using a cheap refurb, with no connection to my primary "mobile identity", is much more secure, and lessens the risk that some miscreant accesses my data through that app, something that's been a problem for many years. My primary - secure - Blackberry has few of the apps I need occasionally, and everything I know mines data is not on any of my handsets, but accessed through a secure browser on a laptop. I've not seen a targeted ad, on a phone or on a PC, in years.
April 6, 2019: Weeks? Months? Please?
Keywords: packing, doctor woes, Boeing, privacy
I was looking for some recent pictures to illustrate this post, but I seem to have not been too active on the camera front. Partly, what I do have is too personal to post - by personal, I mean invading other people's privacy, something I have never done. Even the very pretty wake of cousin Ton I really couldn't show you - I've not asked for permission, but part of that is that I don't think that's my place, a death in the family is such a personal matter, especially for those closest to the deceased. Between that, negotiations with my landlord, builders, and financial matters, there isn't a lot I can post about and not breach someone's confidence. That's a bummer, but I think the days that you plastered your entire life all over Facebook are massively over.
From the look of things, my apartment allocation is getting closer, so I began sorting my things for the eventual move, yesterday, getting boxes out of the loft, that sort of thing. Today, re-sorting, consolidating, labeling boxes, not that I have huge amounts of stuff, but getting ready in time is a good thing. This is all interspersed with my landlord moving much of his stuff out (they physically moved a month or so ago), while the contractors have started redecorating, which thankfully isn't going very fast. If I am lucky, I can move directly from here to the city, which would be great, though there is a backup plan. At least my nightmare, having to move in the middle of a snowy winter, has not come to pass. The way it looks now, I won't even have to hire a truck or trailer, and can just move over a period of time (running out my prepaid last month's rent) using my spaceous SUV-with-the-seats-down.
I order (through my mail order pharmacy) a medication refill, which they normally get a script for from the prescribing physician. The clinic (UW Medicine Shoreline) promptly emails me to say they've issued the script, but won't do that again unless I come in for a doctor visit. Did they previously contact me for an appointment? No. Have physicians at Shoreline seen me for other matters? At least twice, in the past year. I come in annually for the wellness physical my health insurance mandates, something they should slowly be aware of, but mailing me they will not issue a future statin (not a vastly critical drug) presciption unless I do so-and-so? Not in my book. I don't know who these people think they are, but, if nothing else, a doctor cannot refuse medical care unless there is a very good reason. Said doctor not politely communicating with the patient is not a reason, especially since said doctor has access to the medical files provided by the specialists I see twice a year, including all of my tests, at other facilities. I've had previous issues with this particular physician, from unnecessary duplicate tests to chargeable procedures carried out without approval or prior notice.
The Boeing 737 MAX story is beginning to get a bit involved - I am curious how the retrofitted MCAS system could override the pilots' input, if that is indeed what happened. Particularly interesting is to find out why a retrofit correction had to be used, rather than incorporating the correcting in the existing Flight Management Systems. Judging from what I read - but I am no expert - MCAS effectively "killed" the FMS, and permanent pilot override was not an option, with MCAS and the FMS continually contradicting each other. Again, I am no expert, but the 737 first flew in 1967, which makes it one of the older airliner models still in production - has the architecture reached the end of its adaptable life? Were these new engines "one step too far"? This kind of "mistake", if that is what is was, is a very rare one for Boeing. Jury still out, I know, and the stock market shows investor trust in Boeing - a trust I certainly have.
April 17, 2019: World in turmoil, kinda sorta
Keywords: Notre Dame, Assange, packing
There are just a couple of things I don't understand about Julian Assange. First of all, a number of his supporters and "friends" signed on for his bail money. When he failed bail, the judge eventually made those folks forfeit a total of £93,500. I've never heard a word about this, apparently this is OK for him to do? And secondly, however strongly someone may feel about their principles, isn't it a bit insane to lock yourself in an apartment in Knightsbridge for seven years? Even if he had been summarily extradited to the United States, which wasn't all that likely, he'd probably have spent seven years in jail there. The only difference would have been that he'd not have had a cat in a Federal Penitentiary. To me, this man is an egomaniac on a path to self destruction. Manning served her time, Snowden buried himself in Russia, and this guy now bit the hand that fed him - hard. No, you can't publish stolen documents and think you'll get away with it. Americans, in particular, stay on your ass when you wrong them - forever, if that is what it takes.
Although I've not even had my final housing interview yet, I have - hesitatingly - started packing. And in the process, I realize I brought a lot of clothes up here from Virginia that I don't really need. Apart from anything else, quite a few no longer fit, and additional to that, I am unlikely to get a new position in the corporate world, where, especially in the Seattle area, the clothes I used on Wall Street and in the Government environment aren't en vogue, up here. So, with some trepidation, I have started sorting them out, and will, tomorrow, get the first batch over to a thrift store, thankfully I am not having to get rid of all of my suits. Funny, though, thinking why I hung on to this stuff for so many years, probably a "what if" thing stuck in my craw from the corporate East Coast. Off with it..
Watching my early morning (US time) BBC news, I suddenly saw a flash of the roof of Notre-Dame de Paris on fire. That's bad, I thought, but not until an hour later did I see announcements flashing up here-and-there, and soon realized that the cathedral was well and truly on fire. Calling my sister, who used to live in Paris, we commiserated, and I found it hard to believe the fire got (clearly) out of hand so quickly. Some of that damage is irrepairable, seeing the photography this morning it is pretty amazing the entire thing didn't collapse. I was there many years ago, but am glad I've at least seen it the way it's been, the past couple of centuries. In hindsight, the fire service have done an amazing job, but I think in future just relying on alerter technology is not enough.
May 4, 2019: Any day now?
Keywords: Housing Authority, HP Elitebook, computer maintenance, CPU cooling fans,moving
Quicker than I expected, my next Housing interview was called, mostly consisting of Federal questionnaires, and bank statement review, as HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) subsidized housing requires. While that does not in any way give me a timeframe, I received an apartment building assignation during the same interview, something I had not expected yet, especially since the preceding presentation had it that wouuldn't be until later!? Don't look a gift horse in the mouth - it would be wonderful if that means my apartment will be granted soon, though I do understand discrimination rules prevent SHA from making prognoses. At least this is a seniors development, which means I can't get pipped at the post by a family of refugees - no such thing in senior developments. So I probably should relax and count my lucky stars. One bedroom, too, so that's brilliant.
In the meantime, I have largely finished making packing preparations - partly, I've packed the clothes I don't really need, secondly, I'd brought out the suitcases and storage boxes and plastic totes I either already had, or just bought, been lucky with those things. What's been packed has been labeled, and I bought another two travel chests, as the three I have are pretty much full up. Only for one heatpump I have no packing material, so that will have to come "as is", wrapped in blankets. I am still using that as auxiliary heating, anyway.
At the same time, I am doing some computer maintenance - after replacing the hard drive in my fastest laptop, the fan began to make noises during startup, so I ended up ordering a replacement fan from China, as I was not in a rush, and they were cheap - $8.70 for an OEM fan. That works great, and now I am, after moving the load on my big (2TB) disks from the regular drive to a hybrid drive, doing a full wipe on the original laptop drive, and am now cloning the SSD load to that drive, as a backup. Seagate lets you do that, if one of the two drives connected to your PC is a Seagate product, you can install and use their (free!) Discwizard, which contains Acronis cloning software. Once cloned, should anything happen with your installed drive, you can install the clone and boot from it, and it will have the same Windows key your original installation did. I am still fussy about the SSD, as I have had some bad experiences with them - one reason why I replaced the fan, and keep an eye on the internal temperature.
I am just hoping I can keep those two HP notebooks going through my move, because I am spending a fair amount of money to prepare for the apartment, and if I need to replace one of my laptops it'll be more than I can afford. From the look of it, my future rent will be at the top end of what I can handle - though I was told they may take my significant medical expenses into account - and anything I hadn't budgeted for is going to be a problem. All it needs is a small mistake.. I can see my savings shrink already - that's OK, that is what they're for, but it just makes me nervous, if you know what I mean.
May 20, 2019: Improving vi$ion and $peed
Keywords: contact lenses, daily wear, Bitlocker, SSD, silicon drive, move, packing, eye inflammation, immune system
After months of trying different contact lenses, multiple optometrist visits, comments from my rheumatologist (the condition I have can effect some soft tissue, like heart valves and eyes), and finally a visit to the ophtalmologist, the verdict is in: no more extended wear lenses. I think I've been wearing those since the 1980s, and interestingly, it's been the insides of my eyelids (first one, then the other) that no longer tolerate the continuous wear well - the eyeball itself is not affected. So now I have to get used to daily wear lenses, which is an entirely different "experience" - after some testing, I've stopped for several weeks, and now have my first "full" order of "dailies". I think it may well take a month for my eyes to settle down to different vision correction, not to mention non-continuous wear.
My new lenses - a Bausch & Lomb product called "Biotrue" - are thinner and more flexible than my extended wear lenses, so I hardly notice them. I tried Acuvue lenses first, but they were so thin and "floppy" I had difficulty putting them in, which is not good from a hygiene perspecitive, a lens coming back out and having to be re-inserted. So I am glad I tried various different brands, before settling on the Bausch & Lomb variety. Rather than test with a few weeks of my optometrist's samples, I've actually bought a 90 day supply, if after a month or so they don't "work right", I'll head back to the optometrist, and try something different.
I have more or less finished packing for my move, insofar as I can, without having a date, the rest should be done in a day or so, as and when, plenty of empty chests and boxes. When I do get an apartment, I'll need to wait for furniture to arrive - I've got the wish lists all set up, so all I need to do is pull the trigger, order internet, and put in the alarm system.
I've plucked up the courage to Bitlocker encrypt my boot drive on the Elitebook - the 2TB ADATA Solid State Disk (SSD) I put in (see March 5, below) works amazingly well, and while backing up, this morning, using Windows' image backup tool, I found it transferred 400GB or so in under ten minutes - unheard of, that normally takes 30 minutes to an hour from a regular hard disk, but this is something else. And so I thought I might as well set that up for Bitlocker, a Microsoft encryption tool I have been using on my Toshiba with Intel SSD boot drive for a year or so. Never a problem, so why not, I thought, and it is running now. Scary shit, on your main machine... the only problem is that the SSD is running hot, so I've had to stop using the laptop for other things, I was streaming video, and the drive reported a temperature of 68 degrees Celsius, when the specs state 70 is the max. 2TB of silicon is a lot to reformat, and the cooling inside the laptop is primarily controlled by the CPU temperature, I don't know if a hot running disk will crank up the fan. There is, after all, a lot of processing power going on in that small footprint. Stopping the video stream helped, it is down to 60 degrees, better be careful, after all, this is silicon, therefore really fast, and 2TB is a lot of cells.
Not that bad - it took about six hours to encrypt the entire 2TB drive, and - at least on this HP Elitebook with a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) chip, boot and run are completely transparent, the system logs itself in. Is the added security that important? Probably not, although it is nice to know nobody can now ever access my financial and other confidential data, but I wanted to see how well Bitlocker works, on a large solid state disk, and what the effect on processing power is. I guess my next backup will tell me how good or bad Bitlocker is. Important is not to use a third party application, but something Microsoft has built into Windows, and therefore will likely continue to support for a long time. My nightmare is always that a vendor stops doing what they're doing, or goes belly-up, and you terrific tool is no longer supported, or worse, stops working. It's happened.. Microsoft's lawyers know you really can't stop providing a service that has been integrated into your main product. I did not want to add processing load to a traditional hard disk, but with an SSD there's really no "load", in terms of electro-mechanical actions that cause additional wear, even though the read/write heads on a drive float on a cushion of gas - that still causes some friction, none of which applies to SSD electronics - so far, so good, happy.
May 28, 2019: Spring into life
Keywords: stomach trouble, Seattle Housing Authority, Car2Go, Theresa May, Brexit, child abuse
(Unusually) felled by a stomach bug for a week, it looks like I would do well to review my diet, and change my eating habits. It looks like I eliminated so much "bad" stuff from my diet - sugar, fat, processed meats, processed mixed oils, yada - that I ended up with an abundance of other bad stuff. I have no real idea why my tummy acted up, but it's the second time this year, and my bi-annual blood tests were all clean, so it is unlikely it's a "real condition". So I'll try the light stuff, probiotics, white bread, eliminate the meat and beans, white chicken maybe, see how we do. I had originally intended to go back to the gym as of today, not having worked out since May 18, but I think I'll start with a couple of days walking instead, before restarting gym visits. Ease back in, so to speak, lost about six pounds, which doesn't make me unhappy. Maybe I can keep the weight below 190, with the new diet.
The Housing Authority is truly in motion - after my April intake interview, last week they pulled my credit report, and a few days ago called my landlord for a reference. I don't know why that makes me anxious, I've cleaned up my credit report to perfection, and things are hunky-dory with my landlord and -lady, especially since they recently moved to their other home, and I am more or less living in a construction zone - which I don't mind. At least the place won't get burgled, which happens frequently in empty homes being refurbished. Anyway, wheels in motion - and friends and neighbours all comment that the Seattle neighbourhood I'll be living is a wonderful upscale safe area. When I submitted my choices for residence to SHA I predominantly concentrated on being able to grab Car2Go vehicles in walking distance - this will enable me to eventually let go of my SUV, not replace it, and save money, the car costs me (including the original 2006 purchase) some $300 per month, and using Car2Go there won't be any "base charges", so hopefully it'll be cheaper, and I will have more cost control. The apartment will make my monthly cost go up, so I need to save all I can.
I think Theresa May should have know several cycles ago her Brexit deal was never going to happen - it seems to be generally forgotten May was chosen as PM, she was never elected. And if you're not elected, you don't have that voter support mechanism. When I saw her fly back and forth to Brussels, month after month, it became clear she is not of this era, she doesn't negotiate using her smartphone and Skype, instead wasting millions of pounds on totally unnecessary travel and dinner meetings and endless security. In the business world, we started using new communication technologies twenty-five years ago, to replace meetings and travel - Mrs. May, clearly, is a dinosaur, and thus never stood a chance. She, sadly, can't claim to have "served the country I love" - she brought the place to an almost complete standstill in just a few years. The delay itself will be very very costly, not to speak of the consequences.
By the way, I just noticed folks in New York with billboards that state "It's a parent's right to choose" - it really is not. A parent does not own their child, to do with as they wish. Just because you have some weird idea about vaccines, does not mean you are at liberty to disable or kill your child! Yourself, arguably, but a child is not property, it is not a pet, and if your not a medical scientist you are not qualified to draw medical conclusions, any more than you can approve construction drawings for a house. It is a hot button item, parents generally seem to think they can inflict their religion on their kids too, it is an issue. Perhaps we should make "parental rights" something parents need to earn, as their parenting skills are tested and assessed. Inflicting measles and mumps on innocent children should never have been part of the permissions.
June 5, 2019: Windows and Blu-Ray
Keywords: Windows 10 Pro, Blu-Ray, HP Elitebook, ISO DVD, heat sink paste, CPU temperature
Windows decided to do its big annual Windows 10 update something like seconds after I finished installing the BD drive I tell you about below, and as has been the case the past three or four years(!), the online update fails. In this case there was no error message, not even an announcement, and when I ran the troubleshooter the error code was not listed at Microsoft, and there wasn't an error found anyway. As I had done the previous times, I had to run the Media Creation Tool, an offline update tool, create an ISO file (which makes a bootable disk able to do a "clean" install), put that on a DVD (so the new BD drive came in handy, I'd had to use an external drive before), and then run it from the Windows desktop. As has been the case before, I needed to tell the installer not to run any online updates before the install, and off it went, for an hour or so. I've just finished reversing the various settings Windows changed, mostly "new" functions that get turned on to help Microsoft collect data, and I just noticed the updates to the update completed too, so now I have to abort my backup and reboot the machine. At least I have the ISO disk, so I can do my other PCs manually. And it is working, I guess, hopefully that will still be the case with the "update updates". Finish the backup tomorrow.
One additional laptop repair I had postponed was a non-working internal CD/DVD writer, which I was not sure was broken. I couldn't boot from it, but there were no errors, and the Windows troubleshooter couldn't figure it out. So I gambled, and ordered a Blu-Ray drive from China, as I had been having a hard time playing Blu-Ray disks with one of my external BD drives - writing went fine. I guess I got lucky, because other than a struggle with transplanting the bezel, which is laptop model specific, the drive went right in, one screw and a bracket and Bob's your uncle. After traipsing through my Videolan install, and reinstalling all Blu-Ray libraries, my test movies (Ender's Game and Wallace & Grommit) ran like the clappers. Brilliant. The drive cost $76, and even though the Chinese said it would take four weeks or so, it only took a week. There were several cheaper offers on Ebay, but this was the only that specifically mentioned compatibility with the Elitebook 2570p, which I thought was the safest way to go. I don't use the BD/DVD/CD drive that much, but to have it to boot from if I have to recover a disk or OS failure is a boon. Windows is, by now copy protected to the point that I've even had a restore fail, because the recovery software didn't recognize all drives...
Having replaced the fans in both laptops, and installed an SSD in my "main machine", all I need to do now is replace the CPU heat sink paste, which helps transfer heat to the cooling system. I came across a mention on Youtube - didn't even know you could do that, kinda makes sense that that would break down over time, especially in a small fast laptop, which, with the new fast SSD, is really clocking up the cycles. Live and learn. As I understand I need to completely remove the old paste, then apply fresh, etc, I think I'll try this on the 2560p first, which is essentially my spare, which I can fix if I screw up.
June 15, 2019: Tools and Utilities
Keywords: Windows 10 Pro, HP Elitebook, Roomba, Pyle USA, robotic vacuum, SSD, air conditioning
So if you take out an auto policy with the Hartford, you won't get dropped if you have an accident, and as you are required to be an AARP member, they will help you enroll. Well, uh, insurers don't normally drop you if you have an accident, unless you did something really bad, they only raise your rate. And I don't hear anything in there that says "We save you money" - because the AARP has a membership fee, and in the few years I had a membership, there wasn't anything the AARP offers that benefits me. It's just an organization that sells your information to other companies, which then try to sell other things to you. So no Hartford for me...
Back in my large house in Virginia, I used to have Roombas to help me vacuum, in addition to a regular vacuum cleaner for the more intense work. Now that I am heading for an apartment, I thought something like that might be a good idea, but when I looked at the prices I had second thoughts. Reading reviews, I noticed that even a $1,000(!!) Roomba still has the same problems they always did - the rotating brushes get clogged easily, need endless cleaning, and you really can't run these things unattended, because they will occasionally get stuck, and, AI or not, they're not sufficiently intelligent to figure out how to liberate themselves, so the "unattended" vac job isn't. The more complicated (read: expen$ive) Roombas and like contraptions tend to clog themselves up by sucking dust and hair and particles through their mechanisms and bearings, the end result being you have to spend hours cleaning the self same mechanisms. So: I decided to stick with simple, stupid. I've ended up with a refurbished Pyle robotic vacuum without the horizontal rotating brush - it just rotates two side brushes, and quite powerfully sucks air through a filter bin with a fine maze, that does not clog, and that air then cools the batteries on its way out. Its dust- and small particle uptake is pretty amazing. It runs for an hour, uses various different rotations, and takes four hours to charge. Refurbished, these units looked and behaved brand new, came with spare filters and side brushes, and at $46, I bought two. That gives me a double set of spares, an extra battery, an extra dust receptacle, and a spare unit. If you ever come across something you need, and find it cheap and refurbished (like a vacuum, or an espresso maker), buy two. There is nothing worse than an appliance you bought in the sale, that breaks, and then you find out a replacement is going to set you back four times as much. Same with my two heat pumps - found one refurbished, for some 40% off, tested, quickly bought another. Many of these refurbished things are actually new, and were returned by a buyer who never used them. If they're damaged, you can always (at least with Ebay and Amazon) return them for refund.
Done. All three PCs / laptops updated with Windows 10's latest - because of the number of updates triggered by the update, and the slow speed with which this all happens, my old Vaio took some six hours to do - this after turning off all boot security, passwords, screen savers, what have you, because if you don't do that
a) the update will fail; or
b) you have to sit there to manage the repeated boots
Turn it all off and it takes care of itself, and at the end of the road all you have to do is to put your settings back. As I mentioned earlier, doing this install from disk, which involves burning a DVD using an ISO file Microsoft makes available, using an application, works fine, I am just amazed I have had to do that for at least three years, as, in my case, the online "big" update always fails, without any indication why.
Speaking of updating, I discovered the other day that SSD's, solid state drives, run significantly hotter than do conventional or even hybrid drives. One commenter mentioned a large disk transfer failed due to over-temperature, and while cloning my "old" drive to the SSD I noticed that my SSD was pretty much cooking, like close to 80 degrees centigrade. So while the cloning software says you can use your system during the cloning process, you may be better off not to. My two SSD's (ADATA and Intel) both came with management software, so I was able to keep an eye on things. As you never know where the threshold is, better be safe than sorry.
In the interim, the hot weather has subsided, so I now have an opportunity to test my heat pumps, in that I have turned off the gas central heating, and am heating the entire house with two 14K BTU portable heat pumps. I had really never had a chance to test the heating cycle, as I had been sharing this house until the beginning of the year, but being on my own, until my Seattle apartment becomes available, I have started preparing for apartment life. The builders have finished the indoors stuff they started on when my landlord and his wife moved out, so I have a chance to do more preparing, having packed much of my gear in the past month, ready to roll. There were some household things I needed to buy and/or unpack and test, as my landlord took (by agreement, I needed to buy this stuff anyway) his kitchen things, cutlery, pots, pans, stuff, so I have had some (planned for) expenditures, from a vacuum cleaner to additional vents for the heat pumps, and I managed to get some cheap 20 gallon storage totes at Home Depot, as I was shopping for those an entire pallet of half-off leftovers with lids came in, so I was able to snarf five, rather than the four I had budget for. With two large sea chests with wheels, and a bunch of large boxes, I have (I hope...) more storage than I need, for the move, having packed three quarters of my stuff already. I don't know I've ever been ready this early for a move - did pretty good when I moved from Amsterdam to London, but then I had help.
June 23, 2019: Things can be fixed, it seems
Keywords: HP Elitebook, air conditioning, heat pump, Intel CPU, plastics, recycling
Go back to where plastics took off, coffee filters, plastic foil, plastic bottles, and you should soon come to the conclusion that we might have solved the waste problem then, but certainly can't do so now. The wholesale production of plastic products effectively was triggered by WWII, when the volumes of war machines and utensils caused engineering solutions that enabled mass production. Recent reporting has shown that a large volume of plastic waste in the oceans dates back to the 1950's and 1960's, and does not decay. While I'll admit the problem is only getting larger, none of the "solutions" being bandied about do anything to remove the existing waste, and I personally do not believe efforts to reduce waste production have much effect, as the majority of the earth's population can't afford to switch the cheap materials we've addicted them to. In the tropics, people can now drink healthy water because it has been pasteurized, and remains so in the plastic bottle, and in the tropics, nobody is going to walk in the stifling heat to return empty bottles to the store, when kids on mopeds deliver the bottles to the consumers (and don't get paid, and can't afford the gas, to take back the empties). We're talking about kids who buy their gasoline by the half liter, as they need it.
As I apparently can swap the CPU on both of my HP laptops, I decided, as I need to dismantle the heat sink to replace the thermal paste anyway, to replace the Intel i5 CPU in my 2560p Elitebook with a faster (2.7/3.4GHz) i7 with a larger cache, which HP lists as compatible. Strictly necessary it ain't, but I can learn from it, and as the 2560 sometimes runs very hot when recording HD broadcast video, the combination of a faster processor with fresh thermal compound my have a benefit. It's been a very long time since I last replaced a CPU, so good practice, and I've replaced everything else that is replaceable and may affect performance, such as hard disk memory and cooling fan. The disk in the 2560p is now a Seagate Hybrid, i.e., a combination silicon / platter based drive, which works very well. A "true" SDD might make the 2560 run faster still, but as I discovered with my other laptop, a silicon hard disk can run much hotter than a conventional disk. As the 2560 isn't essential to my daily operations, it is worth running that experiment. If it works OK, I may do the same to the 2570.
I've finally figured out there's nothing wrong with either of my heatpumps. I bought them both reconditioned, but the first one I bought was not always kicking in its heating cycle, or so I thought, especially when the second one I bought did better. Turns out the two (otherwise identical) heat pumps have different firmware, and so function differently. The "original" if you will, needs to run a double cycle to reset from cooling to heating, the newer one does not, but they both work fine. It was, mostly, me being impatient, and not letting it simply complete its cycle. Duh. At least I won't have to get another, as I had been worrying. Amazing units, if a bit noisy, but cheap to run, and powerful.
July 4, 2019: Happy Fourth, one and all!
Keywords: travel wishes, seafood, healthy food, Windows 10 Pro, Windows update, eSATA ports, USB3 ports, native interfaces
Gosh, I'd love to travel again - the reason I am holding back is that I've got to get my move done before I do (=spend) anything else. I'm doing OK on that score, but I'll be happier once the move is done and I can top up my savings again (I hope, what with a higher rent..) and go see some relatives in Europe. Or Australia. We'll see.
The pic to the left has some seafood - I am pretty much a meat-eater - no problem with fish, but I just can't afford my favourite, sashimi, generally imbibed in restaurants. So once they built this Winco supermarket in driving distance, I discovered affordable frozen tuna (delicious raw!), and I am progressing to frozen shrimp now. Cooking on my own kitchen equipment, now that the housemates have moved, I can experiment a bit. Reason for diet changes is that I've had an unpleasant bout with constipation a couple of time, over the past six months, something I never used to have. With some medication changes, I might as well make some dietary changes, especially since some of the more expensive stuff is actually affordable at Winco. How that will pan out once I move to Seattle I don't know, that's an expensive place to shop, the cheapo supermarkets are in the suburbs, not in the city, and certainly not where the Housing Authority is planning to put me. I may end up coming up here a couple of times a month, to get cheap stocks. And I need to check Amazon's groceries, as where I will be living they deliver everything, including perishables.
The latest update to Windows 10 installs a 8GB virtual disk on your hard disk, or, at least, reserves 8GB of disk space for Microsoft. It is virtually impossible to remove or deactivate, and as it turns out, Microsoft created this "device" because many Windows 10 users had their systems go way South when updating, simply because their hard disks were more or less maxed out, and the update process didn't make sure there was enough available space for the installer code. You may recall, last year, the bad press Microsoft got for crippling tens of thousands (if not more) of Windows systems. Well, I guess this is how they fixed it. In itself not a bad idea, though you would think Microsoft would be able to have the updater check available disk space - I have more than a terabyte available, so don't need this kluge. Having said that, it is a failsafe, just a messy one. It remind me of what we used to do with systems back in the 80's - if they weren't always well behaved we'd piut some code in that rebooted them every day at midnight, done and dusted. Just don't let Microsoft tell you it has "intelligence" in its operating systems, because if it did, these types of kluges would never have had to be thought of. Honest.
I have a large (in capacity) hard disk hanging off the back off my "main" laptop, on which I back up, using a script, my main operational archives, kind off all of the files that I want to retain. That way, I can wipe a lot of drivel I don't think I need any more, without losing it altogether. The only drawback, if that is what it is, is that you need large (2TB, in practice) drives for both primary and backup, until the backup fills up, at which point I hope they make larger 2.5 inch laptop drives. There are some today, but they're thicker than normal, and prohibitively expensive. Anyway, long story short, I have port replicators for both of my laptops, and that meant I could connect the secondary drive to one of the USB3 ports. That's plenty fast, but I would have liked to connect it to the eSATA port, where it would become one of the "local" drives, directly on the computer's bus, and file transfers wouldn't have to go through the shared USB ports, which I otherwise only use for a graphics adapter. Only today did I think to check the port replicator, and sure enough, there is a secondary eSATA port on there! How stupid am I? Anyway, that lets me connect, using a special cable, the hard drive directly to the bus, and power it from a USB port, which makes it pretty fast (3GB/sec), not a "secondary" device, and located out of the way behind the port device.
July 18, 2019: Waiting it out
Keywords: expenses, slow going, rice cooker, Trump, Rapinoe, ticker tape, long cool summer
If my lack of frequent blog entries would lead you to think nothing's going on, you'd be right. I am trying to absolutely minimize my outgoings, so that I'll have enough savings by the time SHA allocates an apartment, and can buy everything I need. I was OK by the end of last year, but then my rent went up, so I am somewhat stagnant. Stagnant, but, for now, OK. Expenses did go up, as well, medical bills somehow went up, I have had to switch (permanently) to more expensive contact lenses, all in all spending just a little more so I can't save more. My financial software tells me how I am doing, budget wise, and it looks like I am breaking even, just. That's cool, I have sufficient savings to move and buy some needed furniture, so no need to fret, although I don't know hwat my future rent will be, and what the monthly bills will be like. Worst case, I am going to have to let the SUV go, there is always that option.
Always niggly little bits, too - my rice cooker packed up, so I shopped for a replacement - although I don't really need an "automatic" rice cooker, I can create the most wonderful Basmati in my pressure cooker. And I did worse - I have often longingly looked at the Korean and Japanese induction multi-cookers, mostly based on rice cooker technology that those perfectionists are famous for. Thing is, those cookers cost between $300 and $900, give or take a dime, and I just can't afford that kind of money for a rice cooker. Induction, which doesn't use a "heat" source as such, cooks thing much more gently, uses far less energy, and has a much improved fire risk, being without heat elements, and fitted with a cooling system for the electronics. I've actually been cooking on induction only, since the flatmates moved out, and the builders, with my consent, removed the filthy electric element cooker that was in the kitchen. Anyway, I scoured the internet, and to my delight found a much cheaper induction rice cooker, with multi-cooker capability, so am just waiting for that to be delivered, will tell you all about it once I can start experimenting with it.
No, nothing special, just a budding rose in the back yard. I had been having problems getting my Nikon SLR to focus properly, but as it turns out when I use the rearview LCD it actually micro-focuses using the lens focusing motor (if so equipped) as well as the housing focus. I'd never quite gotten that to work properly, and that probably simply was my impatience. It isn't clear to me why, with some lenses, the camera uses two focus automations, but I understand now why that is better than the manual focus, which isn't as accurate. Now I need to try doing this with my other lens, which doesn't have a built-in focus. I think the focus here, considering this is an aftermarket 70-300 Sigma DG lens I think I bought rather cheaply from a huge bin at a Kaufhof in Munich, all those years ago. Chasing Esther, I was, in Bavaria, before she had enough of Germany and returned to her native South Africa. No tits, but lots of spunk...
That was funny, President Trump behind that rain soaked security screen during his July 4th talk. Like much else in this presidency, it gave a tear streaked impression, not at all the face he wanted to show, I am sure. And yes, you can't have tanks with combat treads on the National Mall. In the olden days, tanks had special "soft" treads if they needed to drive on highways - I remember this from Germany, where there were vast columns of American armour. They had their own speed limits, in mph, on small yellow roadside signs, too, or they'd rip up the Autobahn, their speedometers not having kilothings on them.
Unusual to see women's soccer get such attention, when I lived in soccer land the wimmins' variety was never talked about, or shown much. I mean, it is brilliant that is now happening, I was just a bit taken aback to see the final in Lyons broadcast integrally at (here) 8am. Not in HD though, but I watched it on the BBC. The Dutch team did well (I mean, how can you not say that when they make it to the finals?), but I think they need some of the men's teams coaches and training to get to where the US is today. The other unusual thing is that soccer never was a thing, here, though popular at school and in the Hispanic communities, so the see the women take such a popular position is interesting, and good for them. Ticker tape down Broadway on Wednesday? Superb!! The world did change - a pink haired lesbian the nation's darling, and publicly telling off the realtor in the White House....
July 22, 2019: Computer cooling research
Keywords: HP Elitebook, Intel Core i7, CPU cooling, CPU replacement, thermal compound, Trump, Congresswomen
The CPU replacement in the HP Elitebook went swimmingly. Well, one hopes, it'll take a day or two to figure out whether I correctly did the mount and the thermal compound replacement, which is finicky, to say the least. The small size of my Elitebooks makes working in them hard. Especially the thermal compound - most of the help you get on Youtube involves normal size CPUs, but these mobile Core i5 and i7's are beyond small, and as I had never put thermal compound on a CPU, I really didn't know how much to apply. The only way to find out is to simply do it, and then find out after an evening's run, and a quiet night, if all is well. At least nothing is smoking or smelling... The new CPU, an Intel Core i7 @ 2.7/3.4GHz with a 4MB cache, is approved for this HP, so I should be OK, and I am hoping its extra power will help the laptop run a little cooler. Once this is tested, I'll replace the thermal compound in the other HP, my 2570p., now that I know this is actually a good idea, part of necessary maintenance, and not that big a deal in the HP business notebook, which were designed to easily come apart for maintenance and repair.
The pic to the left has the entire CPU - the die is 1.5 inches square, only the silver bit in the center is the actual CPU, you can imagine the heat generated in the unit, which consumes up to 35 watts of power. Not only does that small size contain the CPU, but a good amount of cache memory, and the GPU, the graphics unit, amazing when you think of it, and the heat output is not surprising. I'll want to test a few more days, but I think the additional CPU speed and cache may well reduce the heat signature, at least that's the way it looks after a day. That's combined, of course, with the new thermal compound, I have no idea how much of an effect that has, but the 2560 runs quieter, first impression, than it did before. Because I had to remove the hard disk, fan, heat sink and CPU to do the install, I was able to thoroughly clean the insides of the unit with compressed air, and retighten the entire assembly. Fingers crossed. I'll try and elaborate, in an upcoming blog entry, about what I have learned about PC maintenance - I thought I knew pretty much everything there was to know, but now that I've paid more attnetion to heat management, I've learned more. Once I redo the cooling system in my 2570p (I did the 2560p, just now) I'll take some pictures of its innards, and maybe even do some video, now that I have my Nikon's self-focusing sorted, and put in a faster memory card, which is what the problem was. Sort of pleased being able to do all this "extra" stuff while I wait, marking time, for my "new" apartment. What's next? Ah, this induction rice cooker, which should be delivered tomorrow, replacing the recently deceased conventional rice cooker.
The orchid to the right is one I bought at the supermarket a couple months ago. A previous orchid died, but this one (which lost its original flowers pretty soon) seems to be holding its own, it grew that flower from scratch. I've more or less ignored the instructions that came with it, bathe and spray it once a week, add some plant food to the water I bathe it in, and after an hour drain it and put it back on its high shelf, where it gets some moderate filtered sun in the afternoon. That flower has been there for over a month now, we'll see how it does.
Actually, Mr. Trump, I think this country has done better with people unhappy with the status quo, people who then made changes, worked for improvement. Those Congresswomen who try to effect change were elected to do that, they are where they are to "Make America great again". And they aren't under any obligation to "be happy" with the mess you're creating. I personally could have "gone home" when the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, flew fully fueled airplanes into the buildings across from my office, but I did my job and fixed what they broke, both in New York and in Virginia. Didn't see you there, and no, those were not happy days, it was personal for me. I think when we get the bill for your presidency we'll be truly, massively, unhappy. And, Mr. Trump, do remember you're an old guy, surrounded by old guys, and these Congresswomen are the new generation. They will be running this country, not you and your blondes, and I kinda like they make their own rules. It is an almost automatic response to "Trumpism" - you break the rules, so can everybody else, and the young ones have tricks you've never even heard of. It is what you created.
July 28, 2019: Induction heating is better
Keywords: induction cooking, induction heating, Housmile, rice cooker, HP Elitebook, Intel Core i7, heat sink, thermal compound
The Housmile induction rice cooker I ordered got here, and greatly surprised me! At just under $100, I thought it was suspiciously cheap, and some reviews I found on Amazon (where it isn't on offer any more) only reinforced the doubt (a "normal" induction cooker starts at $250 or $260, and can cost up to $950). But: lo and behold, it came out of the box weighing a lot more than a conventional rice cooker would have done, has a solid steel/cast iron inner cooking pot (rice cookers generally have aluminium or alloy pots, which do not work with induction, which only works with iron based materials) and seemed to have all the electronic innards induction cookers do.
If you've not looked at induction cookers: they use electromagnetic waves to energize an iron based cooking pot, which then warms up, together with its contents. The amount of energy provided to the cooking pot is controlled electronically, and demand based - only the cooking pot warms, and the electronics measure how much energy is being used, for instance by a liquid being heated up. It is a feedback loop, if you will. Turning it on to try its "rice" setting, I was greeted with the fan noise induction cookers normally emanate - as cooking pots radiate some heat back to the induction device, a fan keeps the electronics cool in an induction heater, all under digital control. Long story short, this cooking pot is completely automatic, cooks the most perfect Basmati rice I have ever tasted (not kidding!) in just 28 minutes, and comprises a fully automatic, computer servo controlled, pressure cooker with digital and programmable settings. Amazing, honestly, and well constructed. I can't afford a $300 single purpose cooker, and at $99, this thing is my dream come true (my late wonderful Indonesian grandmother would kill me if I messed up rice). So happy I ordered another, so I can have an affordable spare, should #1 ever expire. Having said that, induction units usually last forever, as they do not generate heat, which, amongst others, makes them very safe, and the electronic controls make them pretty much child proof. This unit even electronically bleeds off the cooking pressure, and won't let you open it until that's done, and shown on the display. I should probably add that induction cooking is far more energy efficient than any other cooking technology, partly explainable because no air or conductive mediums are heated in the process. I just had not expected the pre-programmed rice cycle to be perfect, I guess the Chinese are very perfectionist, and have technology skills they apply to just about anything. My heat pumps and induction cookers all use native Chinese technology - you really ought to go and visit a Wal-Mart in Beijing, you will be amazed at the technologies the Chinese essentially build for themselves, rather than for export. Trust me, take the trip, as I did, learn.
In my previous blog entry I mentioned the CPU processor upgrade I put into my HP Elitebook 2560p - that is working absolutely beautifully, the combination of a faster processor, larger cache, cleaning and polishing of the heat sink, and new thermal compound have quietened that machine significantly, and the fan control is much more responsive to load. So a couple of days ago I did the same to my 2570p, minus the CPU replacement - a new, slightly faster i7 on this machine would set me back some $500, can't really afford that. But the rest of the maintenance had the same effect - quietened the fan, reduced the CPU temperature, and better, more acute, temperature control. Magic.
While I have always done a lot of maintenance on my computers, I don't recall ever routinely disassembling the CPU mount and heat sink, and cleaning all of that with compressed air. Turns out that's a good idea, that and replacing the thermal compound, which I think I'll start doing annually. Especially in the 2570p, the 2TB SSD I recently installed generates much more heat than the previous conventional hard disks, an SSD characteristic I was unaware of. That was part of the reason I googled the CPU thermals, and realized (gamer sites are a Godsend) you can disassemble the CPU mount, clean off and polish the heat transfer surfaces, and "renew" the thermal compound that helps transfer the heat from the CPU to the cooling mechanism. Having done both laptops, kids, that actually works!! Clean the surfaces with rubbing alcohol, polish them with a very fine polishing compound, use fresh new thermal paste (Youtube tells you how to best apply that), and Bob's your uncle.
August 6, 2019: More Cooking
Keywords: induction cooking, induction heating, Housmile, rice cooker, soto ayam, El Paso, Dayton, gun laws, mental illness
Watching some lunatic assault, apparently without reason, a traffic warden in downtown Seattle, at one point ripping the sunroof off someone else's car (damage, to roof and windshield of a brand new Tesla: $10,000) and using that to beat on the warden... There is a lot of random violence going on. In this case, the saving grace was that a number of bystanders jumped the perp and held him for police. Now that everybody has an HD camera in their phone these "events" are on the TV news about five minutes later.
Speaking of lunatics, as I put this entry together, two mass shootings "occur": El Paso, and Dayton, OH. The mind boggles - how do these shooters get to the point they take large numbers of lives, without achieving anything, and either ending their own lives, or being incarcerated for the rest of theirs? What's the purpose?
If you've partaken of some of the televised discussions about "gun control" in the United States, let me say this: whatever laws you might think can be introduced, there are, as of the end of 2017, some 394 million firearms in civilian hands in the United States. Some are licensed, many are not - licensing of a private firearm isn't required in large parts of the USA. So whatever rules could be applied to gun sales, there are just under 400 million guns that will not be affected by those rules. If you actually think that the 250 million American gun owners are going to go to the local precinct and register their guns, your brain has just sprung a leak. And most of those guns were actually sold legally, either after a background check, or a permitted transfer. I know that, after gun massacres, both Australia and New Zealand have changed their gun laws, made much gun ownership illegal, and enforced registration of existing guns, but you need to understand both of those countries have small populations, with good law enforcement and good civil administration.
It would be possible to do those things in the USA, but the cost would be prohibitive, and large groups in the population would actively resist - "civil liberties" and all that. What I think we must look at, and tackle (and this too is an existing discussion that has not, so far, gone anywhere) mental illness. I think we should come to an agreement that many people think they can legitimately be in control of another person't life, they somehow have that right - all you need to do is look at the number of parents who mandate their children's religion, and you know something is perceptually wrong with the way we treat one another. I think that if someone is sufficiently deranged to feel they have the right to take another person's life to make a point, they are off the rails, and unable to "return to normal". The El Paso shooter gave himself up - being a Texan in Texas, he knows he's going to be fried, why wait for that?
I don't know that the connection has been made, clearly, but if we were to instigate some kind of universal health care, where kids could go and get physical and mental care free of charge (which would need their parents to be involved), we might be able to prevent some of these "derailments".
I bought this induction "multi-cooker" despite the fact that I own a perfectly good pressure cooker, made by NuWave especially for use on induction cooktops. That's done well, although I have largely only used it for cooking rice, after I figured out the right mix, quantities, timing and pressure settings. As I mentioned, I like induction, because it is safe (very low fire and overheating risk), and doesn't involve heating elements, like rings or infra-red, burned pan bottoms, and "local" hot spots. The one defining characteristic is that the induction electronics can measure the amount of energy used by the cooking food, and can sense whether or not a compatible cooking pot is used, which none of the other cooking methods do. Wrong pot, the cooker won't turn on. Kid's hand on the plate, the cooker won't turn on. The temperature setting "knows" how much energy is consumed for a given temperature, and cycles on an off once that's reached.
If you're familiar with the Instant Pot, the "hot new" 2017 kitchen implement, that's largely the same device as my Housmile, with one difference: induction. The Instant Pot uses conventional heating elements, which, like gas hobs, cook food by temporarily overheating it. Put a frying pan on a gas hob, turn on the gas, and use an infra-red thermometer to check the temperature of the bottom of the pan, over the gas flame. Folks think that this high temperature, localized, is necessary to cook food, but nothing is further from the truth. The flame locally heats the metal, which then distributes the heat to those areas not covered by the flame - Hold your hand next to the pan, and you can feel how much heat is radiated away, and convected away as heated air. Wasted, in other words. Interestingly, all this probably came about because ancient humans dried clay pottery over an open fire, and discovered that, once cooled, you could put the pot back on the fire, put water or milk or foodstuffs in it, and heat them. The more often you did that, the "hardier" the clay got. But the open woodfire was much less concentrated than a gas burner is, and like electric heating elements, gas flames produce much more localized high heat than you really need to cook. Hence my love for induction cooking - because there is a feedback loop in this technology, an induction cooker produces only as much heat as you need, depending on the setting, and in the case of my new pressure cooker, the feedback loop is fully automated.
I've now tried and succeeded to create a Soto Ayam, an Indonesian chicken soup meal, in the cooker, and have to say its induction technology, together with its automation, produces an absolutely superb result. I prefried the chicken legs (as luck would have it, Fred Meyer had a "twofer" offer this weekend, I ended up with some 11 lbs of chicken legs for just under $10, much of which ended up in the freezer), then combined the ingredients in the cooker. The pre-frying lets you season the chicken bits, while the fat separates out. Dump the fried chicken with the fat (=flavour) in the soup base (mix of chicken broth and water), and once you finish cooking, let the soup cool down in the refrigerator. The fat, having parted with its flavour, will now float to the top, and (overnight) solidify, and you can simply spoon the fat off the soup. Better for your health.
Luckily, there is a local Asian food market which has authentic Indonesian spice mixes and condiments, and so I don't have to create the spice mix "by hand". On the "soup" setting, the Housmile cooker does a great job - gently pre-heating the soto for maybe half an hour, then bringing the pressure cooker up to high (60 lb), and finishing the cooking process in some 50 minutes. Interestingly, both temperature and pressure have indivisual settings - many pressure cooker have only "low" and "high", but this thing is infinitely variable. Once it is done, it'll gently bleed off the pressure, so there's absolutely nothing to do or watch until it warns you it's done.
August 18, 2019: Hong Kong and network storage
Keywords: Hong Kong, two systems, PRC, Seagate, NAS, network storage, HP Elitebook upgrades, heat management
Years ago, as I was trying to figure out where to retire (all plans eventually scuppered by the 2008 stock market crash, which wiped me out), I spent time with friend and colleague D. in both Tokyo and Hong Kong. Tokyo would have been a problematic choice, considering what the Japanese did to my family in WWII, but Hong Kong, where I once had an office, and where several of my former colleagues from New York live, was a definite maybe. But much though I like the place, beautiful, wonderful people, great for business, I just could not conceive of living somewhere with that much pollution, in the deep tropics. Being able to fly in and out at will, and get some fresh air, yea, but once you retire you can no longer do what the well heeled corporate executive can. What you're seeing in the picture to the left is not "haze" - that is Hong Kong, on a clear sky summer's day, that "haze" is the normal pollution level in Hong Kong, where you can buy compressed clean air in aerosol cans.
So I know the place, and immediately clear, when I look at what goes on, is that the new generation of Hong Kongers have understood the mainland Chinese can't do a thing to them. The minute those Politburo troops cross the border Hong Kong, as one of the leading commerce and trading hubs in the world, will be finished. I've looked at both sides of that border, and the mainland Chinese have well understood that if they run Hong Kong, half the advantages that make trade and finance flock to "HK" will be gone. Trust me on this - if the mainland wanted to quell the protests, that would have happened weeks ago. I guess they've discovered the "two systems" thing is a two way street, and the young Hong Kongers have discovered they can seize the control they want, because the other thing will beat them down and finish the Chinese "Monaco". It would probably be good to remember the French tried to do the same to Monaco, and found the cost did not warrant the trouble. Again, peeps: if the Chinese wanted to exert control, they'd have done so by now. If they still do, they'll kill the Goose. They're pragmatic, most of the time....
Bought my Seagate NAS drive in January 2016, it's been on line 24/7 since then, but this morning it "hiccupped". I was able to bring it back in service (the problem with these things is that you really don't get error messages, you just suddenly can't access your files, and there is a red light on the enclosure) through a simple reset, but I guess I need to get a replacement - turns out Amazon had a Buffalo 4TB NAS drive on sale, so if I can only keep the Seagate going for a week, I'll be able to move my files and ditch the Seagate. You just don't take risks with your files... I would have liked to get a larger (10TB) backup drive, but that will have to wait until after I move, and can consolidate my backups properly. Take my advice on this, though: if you have a disk drive that, for no reason, suddenly "hiccups", replace it immediately. You turn everything down, bring it back up, the drive works fine again, no lost bytes or files, but (this from experience) drives have a built in elaborate error correction, and a modern disk drive just does not "hiccup" (assuming there hasn't been a power failure, but my drives are all on UPS power supplies). The number of people I've seen lose their data, due to drive failure, over the years, I can't count on the fingers of two hands. 90% of those occurrences are completely unnecessary, and in most cases, by the time you get an error, that means your disk is demented, and from there it can only die. Trust me on that. The drive I am replacing cost me $134, for 4TB NAS, the new NAS drive (this time with a replacable disk) is $160. Not a lot to pay for security.
I told you about cleaning the cooling system in my HP laptops, and replacing the thermal compound that helps "bleed" excess heat from the CPU to the heat sink. In both of my laptops, that exercise has worked well - the 2570p does not go "Jumbo Jet" any more at all, and the 2560p rarely (but that's still running Windows 8.1, which may have something to do with it). The pic on the right shows you how you can "clean and inspect" - I have, at the bottom, from the left, removed the fan, the CPU, on top of both of those, the heat sink, and just above, the hard disk. Some compressed air to "defluff" the motherboard and the heat sink radiator, and I cleaned (alcohol) and polished (using a compound) the CPU top and the heat sink plate. Then I put everything back together, with a dab of fresh thermal compound between the CPU and the heat sink. Works well, if you can find the instructions for your computer on Youtube, doing this may give your PC or notebook new life. If your system slows down, this can easily be caused by overheating - CPUs and motherboards "clock down" when they get too hot. If your system slows and the fan runs at speed, you don't have a virus - you've got dust, and that's easily remedied. Fresh thermal compound and some manual scrubbing helps too, if done carefully. Make sure your hard disk is defragged, tools are in Windows, and make sure your hard disk isn't over 70% full, because the combination of a fragmented drive and too much data can really mess your system up, and help make it overheat, and slow down.
August 26, 2019: Windows 10 "painless" recovery
Keywords: Windows Home, Windows 10 Pro, Toshiba Satellite, Bitlocker, Windows upgrade keys, safe, finances, reserves
Trying to get my old anemic Toshiba Satellite to boot from a USB device that has a Bitlocker ID as well, the encryption simply stops working. Funny, in a way, I've had (for different reasons) something similar happen with my main laptop, I actually managed to break Bitlocker. IOW: there is some stuff you don't want to do to a "Bitlockered" hard disk. I am not suggesting there is something wrong with Bitlocker, but it is best to first decrypt if you're going to mess with the operating system - Windows 10 Pro, in both cases.
Learned something useful, though - departition the entire hard disk using a Windows installer disk, then do a "clean" Windows install, without using a key. Then, boot from the new install, and now grab one of your old Windows Pro Upgrade licenses. I only have the Windows 8.1 upgrade keys I bought years ago, but as it turns out those keys will happily upgrade your "new" Windows 10 Home install, to Windows 10 Pro, with everything. No, that's not in any helpfiles I've found, I just tried it, and it worked. Completely clean unadulterated Toshiba laptop, which I had been using to run IP camera surveillance software, something I was able to re-install. Important to understand, though - once you have installed the latest, greatest version of Bitlocker, don't futz with the operating system. It's a good thing, I suppose - if anybody tries to break into your system, there's a good chance Bitlocker will permanently disable access to your entire disk subsystem. And that, after all, is the idea - security.
I think my safe is dead - yesterday, I wasn't able to open it (scary, that) until I tried a backup key, I am just not sure if I want to use it with just one key. Besides, the thing is ten years old - lessee, 3/10/2007, more like twelve. In daily use - for the statisticians, some 8,800 open-and-close operations - can't complain, I've had to replace the keypad once, I guess it is time to scrap, having to have it forcibly opened isn't on my list of fun things - and like my old NAS drive, the other day, once you encounter one of these "errors", it is better not to take chances.
Between getting ready to move - which involves buying and/or reserving funds for apartment stuff - and replacing stuff that (Murphy's Law) decides to break just as I am spending extra money, my reserves are dwindling just a bit. This was expected, don't get me wrong, but just looking at my financial management software gives me the willies. And as I have no idea when SHA will make an apartment available - that is, after all, dependent on someone in their housing stock dying, or moving, or going into a retirement home - it is kind of a double whammy. That's not something I should worry about, after all, it'll all come to an end, but still, I am one of your more anxious types, always have been. Still, I am pretty much ready, and my budget looks survivable...
September 6, 2019: Maintenance and Security
Keywords: Bahamas, hurricanes, East Coast storms, emergency generator, NAS, network drives, drive failure, heat pump, A/C, surveillance laptop, wifi camera
The Bahamas is one of those places I once thought about retiring to, like some other islands and high risk areas in the tropics I had visited. One look at the place, today, and I am glad I didn't. Same with Jakarta and Hong Kong, about the most polluted places on the planet and subject to Mother Nature too. I do live in an earthquake zone, today, complete with volcanoes, but then I grew up by the sea in The Netherlands, equally subject to weather vagaries. But on an island, in a known hurricane path.. I've been through a few hurricanes, one in Florida, when I lived there, two in Virginia, one of those I actually had the eye come right over my house in Fredericksburg, that was a scary and very unusual experience, no power for a week, and so many trees in the roads you couldn't get out, except on foot. TG for emergency generators - and by the way, if you don't have a bunch of fuel stored, the generator won't work, because you'll run out of gas or propane, because you won't be able to get to a gas station, and even if you can, they will not have power for their pumps. My property was minus 60-odd full size trees, after that storm. Ah, and there was a tornado that went right by (as in, 10 yards) my house in New York's Westchester County, that was pretty horrendous too. So think about it when you decide where to live, you can see the risk you take if you pick a high risk place. Insurance companies have risk charts based on events, if you want to figure that out. They'll make the data available, and usually the local council has that too...
Swapped the erratic 4 terabyte Seagate NAS for a new Buffalo, now all I need to do is re-back up the HP 2570, which will take, in bits and pieces, a few days. The 2560, which by now easily has more than a terabyte of data, I am not backing up to a NAS, but I've put a 3.5" 3TB spare that was sitting in a box in use to do that. After I move, I will likely replace the two 3TB drives in the Zyxel NAS with 10TB drives - running RAID 1, which means I have to buy three identical 10TB drives to have a functional spare. I had originally planned to replace the two bay drive with a four bay drive, but in the interim 10TB drives have come down so much in price I don't need to get all "complicated" - a 10TB WD Red lists for $250, as I write this, and RAID, after all, is supposed to be failure resistant.
I've been able to keep an eye on the energy consumption of my heat pumps over the summer - total home electricity consumption, (at Puget Sound rates) averages just under $50 a month (as the boiler runs on gas, add $10 a month for hot water). So that's kinda cool, and it proves I was right where the efficiency of modern heat pumnps is concerned. Admittedly, it's not been a blisteringly hot summer, but especially being able to effectively cool down the house overnight is a huge boon.
On the security front, I've now been running my surveillance laptop, with two IP cameras, for a couple of months, 24/7, and that works a treat - actually, any issues I had went away when I reinstalled Windows 10, more or less inadvertently. Considering I bought this Toshiba as a refurb, a few years ago, at Best Buy, for under $250, with extra memory, I can't complain. The old 160GB Intel SSD I got from one of the HPs went in there, too, and so, as the Toshiba is fanless, there are no longer any electro-mechanical parts to worry about.
September 15, 2019: Lookin' and Cookin'
Keywords: A/C, heating cost, environment, climate activists, moving, tenants, summer, fall, Housmile, induction cooking, appliance programming
I keep, especially out of Western Europe, reading that air conditioning is bad for the environment, as if A/C has no real purpose. While I understand some of the argumentation, I would suggest that those advocating for an abandonment of A/C, stop using heating as well. Heating, other than to prevent homes and people from freezing, is just as useless as A/C, it's just for comfort. We really can do away with refrigeration, to a large extent, as well - we can sterilize, pasteurize, we have plenty of technologies that let us buy fresh food that can be consumed in a couple of days, some cooked to prevent decay, and not go to Costco to buy huge amounts of refrigerated and frozen food that can then be stored for weeks in huge refrigerators and huge freezers - I mean, if you're really concerned about the environment. A four million dollar absolutely useless sailing racer built for the sole purpose of glorifying its owners and designers has to transport a sixteen year old "climate activist" to a conference in New York, so she can avoid a polluting airplane seat? And once there, the six man crew flies back to Europe?
Have we gone crazy? Is it that hard to understand that if we had begun work on carbon reduction twenty years ago we might have had a decent chance of influencing pollution downwards today, provided we reduced population growth, agressively, all over the planet, but we didn't. Even the Chinese abandoned their one child policy in 2015, and the majority of countries have no energy and population control that can make a difference. In 2000, fourty million cars were manufactured worldwide - in 2018, seventy million, almost double. Our efforts are going exactly nowhere. In the past decade, Europe's population increased by "only" 3% - but that is 21.8 million people, a lot more than live in my home country of the Netherlands today. And they're all buying cars. Some even the Eco-variety. That'll help.
As my landlord moved out at the beginning of the year, and this house has been painted and fixed so it can be rented out in its entirety, I had hoped the Seattle Housing Authority would come through with an apartment in the summer. But so far, nothing has transpired, other than that references and credit rating have been verified. This being subsidized seniors housing, there isn't a time frame you get, I am cognizant and good with that, but by November 1st new tenants will move in, so by then I have to find myself somewhere else to live. And that will cost me extra money, one more move than I had bargained for. I can cover that, barely, two moves, just not my happy summer. Owell, fingers crossed. Not complaining, just whining...
Summer is done - this hasn't been one of those hot summers, but now the temerature is down enough for some occasional heating, and as of today the atmospheric humidity went up, from 30/40% to 50/60. Still pleasant enough, don't get me wrong, still happily walking to the gym. I am just hoping I won't have to move in the middle of winter - though winters here in Seattle are mild, most years. Nothing much else to say but "fingers crossed".
What I find most amazing about this Housmile induction multi-cooker is its programming. I hadn't realized how these multi-cookers work, and that some are fully automated, with a completely preprogrammed cooking cycle, complete with an automated depressurization cycle at the end. I would assume the programmers of the firmware have to work very closely with cooking staff and chef, because the results, at least of this unit, are amazing. I've spoken to people with Instant Pots who ended up discontinuing their use, because the receipes are too complicated, and the depressurization of the device is a more or less manual process, and I am just wondering if perhaps at least some of their programmers - well, I guess, can't cook. Admittedly, I know what I wanted to cook in my Housmile - rice, stews, and soups - but I must say each has been absolutely perfect, the unit is very easy to clean (even the pressure plate with ring and mechanical sensors unscrews, and can be rinse in the dishwasher. The absence of conventional heating elements in mine helps to make it fool- and heat-proof. There aren't huge numbers of recipes you can prepare in these things, but for the $100 I paid for it, worth every penny.
September 21, 2019: "Procrastinatering"
Keywords: saving, shopping, Macy's, shades, accessories, urban Seattle, moving, SHA, Craigslist, meat, Asian stew, processed foods
I am trying to save as much money as I can, in advance of my move, but I somehow don't think I am being massively successsful. I packed most of my clothes, again in advance of the move, three months ago, so last month I bought a couple of pairs of new jeans, when an old pair tore, and I should have looked in the suitcases. My bad. And then, yesterday, I needed new socks, and while at Macy's "found" an RFID wallet and a new pair of shades I absolutely needed. I must say the Italian mirrored shades were both gorgeous and cheap, but they were cheap mostly because most of the others were $250 and up, and the days I could afford those are long gone. So I got this $80 pair, which my dental hygienist, this morning, said are "cool", and then the Levi's wallet replaced my Perry Ellis wallet, which wasn't even slightly worn - but bulky and ungainly - and then I threw out the Fusion wallet from before that, which wasn't really that worn either. YouKnowWhatIMean? But I guess an RFID wallet - standard purses and wallets are routinely RFID now - is safe and sensible, and as you can see in the shot both the shades (Vogue by Luxottica) and the wallet are fashionable. My old Oakleys, once bought at Amsterdam Airport for too much money, had already had their lenses and dayglo rubberoid replaced, and were definitely past the sell-by date sufficiently that I threw them out when I came home with the new shades.
I am quite looking forward to moving to Seattle, anyway - for the first time since Fredericksburg, VA, I will have a steady "base", and be able to discover Seattle properly. Living in the suburbs I really didn't have much of an opportunity to go on proper discovery trips - in many ways a shame, because the Seattle area is gorgeous, but more than the odd trip I've not really managed. Apart from anything else, rummaging around the Puget Sound by car is expensive, I really could not afford to go places and get a motel room for a couple of days, just the odd trip up to Vancouver (the one in Canada) to renew my passport cost several hundred dollars, not helped by my gas guzzler. Thanksfully we Dutch now have ten year passports, so I won't have to worry about that for a while. But hopefully, once in Seattle, I'll be able to make better use of public transport, and be closer to the train (Amtrak) infrastructure.
I do have to figure out where to live if the SHA doesn't come through in October, I need to get on Craigslist, and find somewhere between here-and-there. It is probably time to start that, a month is not a very long time, and I will have to find a storage place in the area to put some of my stuff I've got in the garage here. I've gotten rid of most everything I don't need, first of all back in Virginia, but here, as well, in the past couple of months. One nice side effect of an almost-bankruptcy is that you learn to "unload" - most of my move to Bellevue got financed via Craigslist and the pawn shop. First things first, though - mow the lawn, and see if I can get neighbour D's pressure washer started, he couldn't. Nope - it starts fine on a squirt of ether, but then dies, guess it isn't getting fuel. It has a fancy Subaru engine, no reason why it isn't running, and as it runs on ether, the electronics must be good. Puzzle.
Meat eating has attracted quite a bit of negative publicity, of late - I don't consume a lot of meat, more often than not do a kind of chicken stew, but I came across a huge T-bone steak at the supermarket, on sale, some 4 lbs of meat for under $10. Couldn't help myself, and I must say the Malaisian stew I created in the multi-cooker came out glorious. I cook for the freezer - one of the nice aspects of doing that is that you can leave the stew in plastic containers to cool down, overnight, that floats the fat to the top, and then those go in the freezer. Once defrosted in the fridge, the fat layer remains solid, and you can simply scoop that off. I cook my stews concentrated, so just add some water then, and reheat. At least I am staying away from processed meats, which have attracted, from a health perspective, a lot of negative publicity, of late. As it turns out, it is relatively easy to find minimally processed foods in the supermarket, but you do have to do some research - and there really isn't any such thing as "unprocessed foods" on the shelf. Butter? Butter is highly processed, as is milk. Oil? Most oils are processed, some more than others, I tend to stick with olive oil and sesame oil, both of which can be bought in a variety that is minimally processed, both being oils that have been around, virtually unchanged, for thousands of years. There are indeed lots of other "plant based" oils, but if you do the research you'll find that those often didn't become products until factory based production methods, using modern machinery and chemicals, became available. Highly processed, in other words, enabling mass production of these oils for various purposes, from lubrication and lamp lighting to cooking and deep frying.
September 29, 2019: Summer's done, here, at least
Keywords: fall, Donald Trump, Brexit, e-cigs, vaping, Heinz 57
The Cherry Blossom in front of the house started showing the approaching fall, this week, it has grown into a beautiful shape, kinda cool. Had to drag the old Nikon out of its hidey hole, and stick a flash on, to get this shot on a rainy day. Clever though our smartphones are, there are some colours and contrasts you don't get unless it is overcast, with some reflection from a rain-slick street. I am writing this during a sudden cold spell, with the first snow (in boatloads) falling to the East, but then you can't predict that stuff much. Rain interspersed with sun, here in the lowlands - yesterday I didn't walk to the gym, in the rain, today the sun came out, so I did. Excuses only go so far...
Is it Ella? Or is it Memorex? I've gotta tell you that I am largely not commenting on the political goings-on because things seem to be getting crazier by the day. President Trump calls the Ukraine president for assistance fighting Joe Biden, Boris Johnson finally makes it to Prime Minister and then begins presiding over a larger debacle than Theresa May did, and this Swedish kid completely ignores that global warming is caused by unchecked population growth, which, by now, has begun to cause folks from impoverished countries to all move to "rich" Western countries. It is a bit like the inmates have truly taken over the asylum - thanks to Donald Trump we now all pay sales tax on online purchases, which, here in Washington State, has made most of my purchases 10% more expensive. This helps who?
Then, e-cigarettes, the tool that would help people quit smoking, has begun killing users outright, and now the CEO of Juul is taking off as his seat heats up. Boeing is fixing failing automation on some of its aircraft - something that's happened a few times since computers were invented - while the British believe Donald Trump - the man with the largest ego on the planet - will help them Brexit. Dream on, peeps. I mean, I buy overpriced English piccalilly now and again, but to help you understand what you've done, that is now largely made by one American company - in one huge factory in The Netherlands. Not an astute way to help the UK economy.
October 9, 2019: Glue yourself to a building? Really?
Keywords: climate activists, electric vehicles, Doc Martin, PBS, union, strike, Republic
Watching climate activists all over the Western world "demonstrate by disruption" I continue to wonder how this is going to effect change in climate and polluted environments. The interaction between industrial might and social environments, even our propensity to leave our homelands and live in large cityscapes that are not terribly efficient or frugal, kind of preclude an effective way of dealing with climate and environmental issues. I think that if we do not somehow begin to mandate that couples must prove they are environmentally responsible before starting a family, and tell migrants they can't be accomodated if they have children, or if they plan to start a family, we don't have a chance in hell to make meningful change.
You see, it isn't about "clean" electric vehicles, because all vehicles pollute - it is about no vehicles. It sounds harsh, but there is no reason whatsoever not to mandate that a refugee may come live in your land, but must commit not to have children, and not buy motorized transport of any kind. I mean, if you are a refugee, you shouldn't care about having more rooms than you need, or a career that comes with a Toyota Prius. And we should try and extend that to all those leaving their parental home, and setting out in their own, independent lives. I keep on repeating that climate change might have improved if we'd not come out of WWII to start improving our world and breeding, we have created a society where we can drive to a coffeeshop and get a cup of coffee in the drivethrough, and I can't tell you how unnecessary and wasteful that is, and how that means we've embedded waste in the structure of our society. Why do banks have drivethroughs? I am at my bank branch maybe once a year, and that is only because the Dutch government insists I prove I am alive, but other than that I have been banking electronically for decades. The only reason I still use cash is that it saves me money when I buy gasoline, and I don't think you can blame me for this gas station chain making extra money by not using plastic for payments. If you'd like to get a good pointer as to how wasteful we really are, go to Walmart, and take a walk down the petfood aisle. First of all, few people really need pets, which are a very expensive, wasteful and polluting luxury, but then you have to ask yourself if this huge variety of foods is in any way necessary. Left to their own devices, pets don't need multiple types and flavours of foods, they have a natural instinct for what they need. They especially don't need ground up offal with vegetables, with a markup if somehow "real liver" or "real beef" was driven past the factory twice a week. I mean, do dogs and cats really need human beings to read labels on cans for them? Those same human beings who are being advised not to eat canned food, on account of the unnecessary and unhealthy sugar and sodium used as preservatives? Seriously, a hamster or a fish is nice, but if we didn't have entire stores full of them, our kids would be just as happy. I promise. Most kids that get fish do not become biologists.
I think the new season of Doc Martin has started - at least, I do not recall seeing this episode before. Don't get confused, I watch the UK's ITV via a VPN, so you don't need to chase all over PBS to find it this week. Though I must say PBS broadcasts follow on pretty closely from popular British series - I just wish they would stop broadcasting these nonsensical medical talk programs, you know, the ones that only let the presenter sell more books, and provide little, if any, value to life. And if you're wondering why I rarely post links any more - I think y'all have had Google for long enough so you can do searches, which most browsers facilitate with a simple highlight of a piece of text, anyway. wright - the sun is out (after a September night where the temperature dropped to 32!!), brunch done, time for the gym. See y'all in a bit.
Anyway, funny how much I enjoy watching British TV, and (still, after all these years) am not hugely fond of American TV. Especially today's crime series seem so much over the top to me, it isn't funny. The protagonists are too pretty, they're dressed in haute couture, and do lots of physically impossible things, where CGI, today, lets things break, fall, explode, in ways you could never survive. I am just not seeing the producers attempt to create realism - and, of course, nobody in an American TV series is ever physically realistically shot, because that's not allowed to be shown. I sometimes wonder whether kids have such an easy time with guns and knives because they have had little exposure to what death really looks like. Just a conjecture, I don't really know. It isn't like you can go buy a gun, and then shoot a couple people to find out how that goes, right?
Amazingly, the local garbage collectors are on strike. Over in Massachusetts, on the other coast the last time I looked, a union has a disagreement with Republic Services, and as that has not resolved, the union has sent pickets to other Republic worksites in the nation, where the unionized workforce then does not cross picket lines. They're not technically on strike, just can't work, as per their union contract. So Republic stopped the garbage collection, as of last Thursday. And nobody seems to have any idea how this is getting sorted. I can't say I've ever seen this before, remote control pickets. Is this even legal? How can union workers refuse to cross an out-of-state picket line when there is no way their WA State employer can negotiate with an out-of-state union?
October 13, 2019: Credit? Debit? E-Stuff?
Keywords: Google Pay, NFC, USPS, system compatibility, chip cards, contactless, Walmart
Totally inadvertently, I noticed a blazing dawn while brewing my morning coffee, and rushed out with the Blackberry, something I don't do too often, these days. Spectacular, though, don't you think? The weather has been weird - night frost for a week, had a hard time finding my windshield scraper, not normally an October tool, in these parts. But temps appear back to normal, fingers crossed.
Where I signed up for Google Pay last year, I have had little chance to use it - apart from one (new) supermarket in my neighbourhood, Sprouts, no other store chains I frequent had it built into their payment terminals. Sprouts, however, is expensive-ish, and I found some of the fresh vegetables there less than, uh, fresh, and many of my favourite brands are not stocked at all. On top of that, Sprouts does not allow firearms in the store - I very much appreciate that, but it means you have to make sure you're not packin' heat, if you have a CPL (concealed pistol licence). It reminds me a bit of the Christian owned stores, which don't open on Sundays, because their owners think they know what's best for their staff and customers without asking them. I personally don't think it is anybody's business what I do on which day, that time is long gone. No other stores in this area have such a prohibition posted, that I know, with the exception of the United States Postal Service, which does not allow firearms on its property (law enforcement excepted) anywhere in the nation. At least Sprouts has the notice on the door - the Post Office has it only on the notice board, inside.
Anyway, I was primarily interested in being able to pay using an NFC capable smartphone, especially as some cheaper Android phones now have that capability too - I was not going to buy a $900 Samsung so I can use it as a credit card. In my particular case, it meant I can use a smartphone to pay from my overseas savings account, without having to carry the associated bank card. I've got a bunch of cards in my wallet, something that will be familiar to many of you, and I don't want to carry a second wallet.
Long story short, it works like a banshee, and should I so desire (which I don't) I can have more cards in the app. On top of that, Google USA can't pull data for my foreign bank card, because that account lives somewhere it is illegal for Google to help itself to that kind of data. Paranoid? I don't think so, I just try and control my "big data" where I can, even though that may mean some inconvenience and using multiple devices - the handset that has Google Pay normally has GPS disabled, and when it is enabled, when I shop, WiFi is off. Etc. Other apps I use a lot, like heart rate and localization, are on another mobile. Etc. Having multiple lines isn't that expensive (T-Mobile charges $10/month) and I try to buy either refurbished fancy handsets, or cheap large screen handsets, depending on which app I want them for. Works for me. While tech firms certainly have the data and processing power to gather most of my information worldwide, I am assuming (partly because of my IT expertise) they ignore what they consider anomalous data, information that does not gel with the other 95% of shoppers and buyers in the area. You can tell how important this is from the way Amazon behaves - when they use the Postal Service or UPS to deliver stuff, you're getting emails when your things are on their way. But with Amazon's own delivery service, you have to log in to Amazon to get tracking data - and every time you log in, they try to suck browser data. So - not for me, I have all but moved my online shopping to Ebay, which behaves more "normally", and does not have that much infrastructure and interest in selling your information.
According to recent research published in Britain's Telegraph, half of all debit (store) payments are now made using contactless (NFC) card, and 37% of credit payments. Those are large numbers - the percentages are much lower in the United States, but to some extent this is because those novel payment technologies started in Europe, much before they did here. The "chip card" was introduced in 1986 in Europe, but didn't make it to the United States until 2012. Slowly being superseded by NFc, or "contactless", chip-and-pin offered vastly better payment security. A good example is my European chip-and-pin card, which will automatically block if an attempt is made to swipe with it if the terminal has a chip reader. That is still, today, not the case in the US. Walmart, to the best of my knowledge, was the first to convert its card readers to chip-and-pin - at a time no American financial institutions were even issuing those cards.
October 20, 2019: Packing again, moving again, ever forward
Keywords: detergent, laundry, storage, Facebook, Libra currency, bitcoin
Decades ago manufacturers began concentrating detergent, so they (and you) did not need to pay for shipping large amounts of water around the country. Doing that means advertising, spending time and money educating the public, and patience - smaller, in the eyes of the shopper, means less "stuff" and relatively more money. The past few months I've noticed they're at it again - look at the detergent shelves in the supermaket, and you may notice smaller bottles with gaudy imprints, that sport the same number of loads as the cousins twice their size. I just bought a 40 fl. oz. bottle of All good for 53 loads, and cheaper too. You just have to be very careful you follow the dosing instructions - the caps are much smaller, and for a "normal" load you seem to need less than half a capful of that smaller cap. If you're one of the gushers, or your kids handle the machine, go easy on the new technology. I wonder why now, though?
