Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
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“Common Sense? We Don’t Need No Steenkeeng Common Sense!“

In the face of such stupidly ironic statements from The Ø! as,

“When times are tough, you tighten your belts. You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college.”

That from the idiot who apparently thinks spending money the country DOES NOT HAVE on wasteful, useless, pork to buy votes for his agenda is the way to deal with a national economic crisis. Cue Bugs Bunny:

[audio:What-a-maroon.mp3]

“We live in an era in which… government of the government, by the government, and for the government apparently can never vanish from the Earth, but instead will continue to grow…

…Meanwhile, appeals to common sense are futile: we all know the common sense solutions to many problems, but the government of the government by the government and for the government isn’t about to allow that.”–Jerry Pournelle

A common sense approach to dealing with an economic crisis engineered by “feddle gummint” meddling is really quite simple. Not painless, but simple.

“Feddle gummint”: stop spending money we do not have.
Getcher stinking hands off my money! Effect the FairTax and operate the “feddle gummint” on whatever it brings in. Period.

“Feddle gummint”: stop spending money we do not have. That WILL mean fewer “feddle gummint” workers and pork programs and meddling in the personal lives of citizens, which, of course, means less power for Beltway self-anointed elites. Oh, boo-hoo.

Of course, absent some serial counseling sessions with Dr. Tarr and Mr. Fether, I doubt the Beltway Bandits will release their deadly grip on the throat of the U.S.

But miracles happen.

Due to an amazingly uninformed assertion made in comments, I’m adding one lil video that packs enough references to enable ANYONE who wants to do their own homework to fact check it, even glean more information by ignoring the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind propaganda and simply doing a little research:

Quite contrary to the myth propagated by the Hivemind, politicians *spit* and anyone with a commie/socialist/class warfare axe to grind, typified by comments such as this,

I think we can sum up the cause of our current economic crisis in one word — GREED. Over the years, mortgage lenders were happy to lend money to people who couldn’t afford their mortgages.

The Federal government required financial institutions to make sub-prime loans to people who could not afford to pay them back. Outright lies such as the one I quoted above (and no, I will not link to that lying site. Google it if you want) are the core of the meme The Ø!’s administration and co-conspirators are flacking.

But it is a lie. Sure there was greed. Largely on the part of those who sought the loans they could not afford to pay back and on the part of politicians whose “careers” were boosted thereby.

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A Helpful Batch File for Windows Users

I like other OSes, but Windows is the Big Kahuna in eyeshare, so naturally I share more Windows tips here than anything else for any other OS. Just the way it is. That said, here’s a lil tip for Windows users to help keep down the accumulated junk a Windows install just naturally crufts up with.

First run “cleanmgr /sageset:99”

Oh, right. Start>Run and copy-paste the above material found between the quotation marks–just don’t include the quotation marks. Win 7 users, just hit the Start Orb and paste it in the search field and hit enter.

Choose files you wish deleted, actions to be taken, apply, then close.

Then copy the text below, paste it into a plain text editor like Notepad and save it as a batch file. Replace “%username%” with your username. Place it in a “tools” folder or some such to use as desired or in your startup folder if that’s your preference.

The switches selected for the del command below are

f=force deleting of read-only files.
q=quiet mode; do not ask if ok to delete on global wildcard
s=delete specified files from all subdirectories.

c:
cd “C:\Users\%username%\Local Settings\Temp”
del /q /s /f *.*
cd “C:\Users\%username%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files”
del /q /s /f *.*
cleanmgr /sagerun:99

Sure, cleanmgr will attempt to clean up TEMP files and Temporary Internet files for you, but it just does a so-so job. By including the first two “del” commands, you’re assured that those WILL be deleted.

Oh, you could also download, install and run CCleaner (“Crap Cleaner”), but even it doesn’t necessarily get rid of read-only files located in the TEMP and Temporary Internet Files folders. It’ll try, but…

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“Consider the Threat Level”

From the otherwise excellent and usually reliable Windows Secrets newsletter comes this guffaw from the usually serious Fred Langa responding to a reader’s question about outdated browsers (with massive security holes) being required by the “feddle gummint’s” FAFSA web site:

First of all, it appears the site has been updated since your phone call. The FAFSA help page lists all the supported browsers, which now include IE 8 and Mozilla Firefox 3.5.4.

Second, consider the threat level: most browser security features exist to protect you against hostile sites that might try to stuff malware into your system or steal information from you. Why would the government need to attack your browser? If the government wants your personal information, it can get it quite openly through legal channels.

Oh. Wait. He was serious. “Why would the government need to attack your browser?” It’s not “need” that drives a “feddle gummint” bureaucrap to do anything, Fred. They pretty much do as they want, because they can. Government of the government, by the government and, especially, for the government shall not perish from the Earth, Fred… *sigh*

Frankly, I consider “feddle gummint” websites to BE malware, unless proven differently.

Continue reading ““Consider the Threat Level””

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I Do These Stupid Things…

…so you don’t have to. That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking with it.

Calibrating the Clear Type tuning on a Windows system with an LCD screen that’s displaying text just fine? Stupid. So, what did I do? You guessed it. The Clear Type calibration tool uses a series of displayed text images for the user to subjectively choose between in order to tune the Clear Type display. What I got recently out of playing with that was a lesson in “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

At 100% in my browser (pick any of four), here’s an example of what “tuning” Clear Type using the M$ utility resulted in:

Ugly, eh? Makes me want to poke my eyes out. At 120% or higher magnification, the effect disappears, though. Still, now I have to reverse the “tuning” or automatically CTRL+Scrollwheel to a different magnification when such artifacts appear. *sigh* Just a warning to Windows users, once again: if it ain’t broke…

Fortunately, I can always browse just as well in another OS in a VM. 🙂

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Repeat: 13 Ways to Have a Better Day

Thirteen Ways to Have a Better Day

1. Think “happy” thoughts. (e.g.–“The guy who just cut in front of me and slowed down in 70mph traffic slowly lowered into boiling oil.”)

2. Smile at the world (and the world will wonder what the heck you’re up to).

3. Wear better-fitting shoes. (Or go barefoot. Sure, you’ll not be allowed in a McDonalds, but you are looking for a way to better your day, anyway, so that’s a win-win for ya.)

4. Avoid phones. (Don’t 90% of your hassles come from “miscommunications”?)

5. Uffda! Avoid “feeda“. *heh* (I once saw a graphic demonstration of the difference between the Norwegian expressions “uffda” and “feeda“–two guys walking; one pointed at the ground and said, “Uffda!” The other didn’t see “it” in time and said, “Feeda!” So, it’s uffda if you see “it” and feeda if you step in “it”… )

6. Be pleasant to idiots. (See the principle stated above. Uffda! You’ve been warned.)

7. Turn off the “news”. (Again, see numbers 5 and 6. *heh)

8. Eat some ice cream. (The joys of cold, sweetened fat!)

9. Take a nap. (There’s no problem that does not look better from behind closed eyelids.)

10. Laugh at life’s little “funnies”. (“So, two Muslim terrorists walk into a 230-grain bullet traveling at 830 feet per second… ” That’s both funny and economical! Don’tcha just love .45 ACP humor?)

11. Coffee!

12. Beer!

13. Pray “The Serenity Prayer”… Frequently.

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to hide the bodies of those I had to kill
BECAUSE THEY REALLY TICKED ME OFF!

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Quirky Day

As a result of beating back some locusts (and getting my lunch eaten by others *heh*), this turned out to be a mostly good, productive but kinda quirky day.

Man! Was I ever a chatty cathy during the time working on the tail end of flooring and other projects Down South. Motormouth city, fer shure. (And yeh, I coulda had a classic SM-58 in my hand doing a monologue, for all the running off… gottachucleatmyself… )

Learned something freaky deaky about OS X. Installing a new hard drive (in a Macbook) and using an OS X install CD apparently does NOT automagically bring up a prompt to initialize the new disk. Have to open Utilities… Disk Utility in the boot menu to force recognition and installation of the drive. Strange. I’ve not run into that in other OSes hardly at all in the last 10 years. I guess Apple only wants geeks to install new drives in their systems. Can’t give an average user any obvious help. *heh* That Apple: always looking out for the users to keep ’em from doing normal stuff. *LOL*

Anyway, boy did I feel like an idiot when I looked over instructions someone had printed out for transferring all his data and software from one Macbook drive to a new one. I never even thought the system wouldn’t tell him he needed to initialize the drive. Silly me. I acted like he was doing the install on a Windows, Linux or BSD system. Live and learn.

Man, sometimes getting old sucks swamp gas. (Yeh, the gas can be a problem too.) Now, my good knee and good hip (on opposite sides, no less… of course) are the ones talking to me. Figures. Just when I get used to the pain in the others… 🙂

My Wonder Woman just got another rave review from her work for another course in her grad classes. Natch. She’s such a wiz! But heck, with a 3,000 word paper for her first month’s class and a ten page paper for this class, at this rate she should just have shot for a PhD, complete with thesis. *heh* Her EdLaw class has at least been pretty interesting. But it’ll be over by the end of this month, I think, and her next class doesn’t begin until April. Means she’ll have some “time out” (from course work, not from teaching) before Lovely Daughter’s wedding March 27. Nice.

Lovely Daughter home early tonight–by 8:00 or so. I guess she has a big day tomorrow between church and some sort of social activity tomorrow evening. Something about gathering to worship some really amazing pottery? I think she called it a “super bowl” or some such. I don’t get it. Seems like idolatry to me, but then I’m just an Olde Pharte.

Oh, well, I don’t suppose it’s much more idolatrous than what goes on in most churches on Sunday mornings.

Just hit my own personal wall. Going to hit the sheets before my head falls off my shoulders.

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Anti-Malware Warning

Microsoft Security Essentials popped up a warning a couple of days ago about an attachment to an email (see “Gullibility: Bad; Skepticism: Good”–yes it was that email–I received it multiple times). I decided to see how it handled it and told it to simply delete it.

It did. It also deleted ALL the emails in my inbox. Not to worry. First, most of my email is filtered into subordinate boxes and none of that email was touched. Second, I concatenate all my email accounts using GMail to collected from three different email servers, then I download everything from the GMail collection. So, all my email is already “backed up” there. Third, I use Thunderbird Portable and can (and do) back up my email again, weekly, by simply copying the Mail folder from the Thunderbird Portable folder to a more durable medium than the flash drive Thunderbird Portable runs from.

So, no mail was lost.

But, if you don’t have multiple backups and do run into a similar situation, don’t say you weren’t warned. 🙂

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“Greatest Songs”?

LomaAlta has proposed the “Top Ten Songs of the 1950s” with his numbers 7-10 listed here. While I don’t disagree with his list (“Top Ten” may well reflect popularity as much as musical worth) and I do agree that his list of songs contain pop songs of some worth, I’d have a different list. Yeh, even in my home with three sisters and a brother, I was the really odd one out. Their 50s (and later 60s) pop music didn’t appeal to me much. Frankly, during those early years, I was much more enamored of instrumental music, particularly classical (which did include some Classical,Romantic and Baroque)–very little contemporary music penetrated my hearing until my college years… when, strangely, my studies were focused on classical music training.

So, my list of songs–50s or othewrwise–is very different to LomaAlta’s–or most folks’ for that matter.

I’ll just my top five:

Number 5:

Of this performance… *sigh* I dislike some of Alastair Miles’ vowel choices, but the Baroque trumpet is just as nearly perfect as one could hope for, and my quibbles about Miles’ vowels are just that: quibbles. Definitely belongs in my top five best songs.

Number 4:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pQ8cIi1Gpk

What list could be complete without Rogers Covey-Crump’s performance of Purcell’s “first” setting of, “If Music Be the Food of Love”? Most counter-tenors sound awfully artificial, but Covey-Crump captures this wonderful lil song almost to perfection (His “the’s” thud on the ear, but that’s a small price to pay for the rest of the performance). BTW, Purcell’s other settings of this text are also worth listening to, IMO.

Number 3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJCnqJJ9uRs

Bryn Terfel’s performance here is my favorite YouTube performance of this stunningly beautiful aria from Xerxes. Yes, another song by Handel. He really knew how to write a melodic line.

Number 2:

Regular readers here have already seen and heard this video multiple times. While the entire Die Winterreise song cycle stands as the single greatest collection of great songs for solo voice, in my opinion, and makes choosing just one an exercise in frustration, this song just grabs me more than any of the rest. Stunning. And, of course, Der Lindenbaum sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau–INarguably, the greatest baritone of the 20th Century, accompanied by Alfred Brendel, well, breathtaking is the least praise I can extend.

But what could edge that out? How about The Last Great Song ever written? *heh* Yep. From the 1926 hit opera, Turandot: Nessun Dorma , sung by the only guy who could squeak by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau for the number one spot as “greatest voice of the 20th Century”–Jussi Björling.

Number 1:

While none of these performances are “perfect” (Fischer-Dieskau, for example, was in his 60s and well past his prime in the performance above), all are great songs, performed by some of the best (and in the last two examples, THE best) voices of the 20th Century, well worth being included in anyone’s “ear conditioning” collection.

I probably have a few hundred other “best” or great songs floating around in my mind’s ear, but these might help put some of the “music” being pushed out to deaden folks’ ears today into some sort of perspective. BTW, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte is pretty much devoid of great songs, but of you can get your hands on a recording with Fischer-Dieskau in the role of Papageno, you’ve found a treasure. Oh, it’s not rare; the treasure’s in Mozart’s music and the wonderful voice of Fischer-Dieskau.