Category: FYI

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Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose?

Or is this “Déjà vu all over again?” *heh*

Now the guy who “wrote the book” on safe passwords has changed his tune and is now advocating using long passphrases.

The thing is, I’ve advocated this sort of thing off and on for years, here at this lil Third World County blog, because it’s an easy-peasy way to have long, complicated “passwords” that are easy to remember. I’ve even posted hints on how folks can “crack” my “passwords”

Hint: many of them are based on, but deliberately do not accurately reproduce, verses from 16th-to-19th Century art or folk songs in any one of six languages, and frequently run well over 64 characters. None of them spell all the words out correctly, and many do not use any of the actual words at all. Go ahead. Crack ’em. For me, they are easy-peasy to remember, though, ‘cos I can just “sing” the songs in my head as I type the passphrases, and because I am an “Odd,” the substitutions I use make sense to me but would seem almost psychotically delusional to “Normals”–or computers.

(Example of “Odd” perceptions/views of reality not directly related to my passphrase substitutions: numbers and mathematical functions have colors, shapes, and positions in 3D space for me. It’s how I “see” mathematical solutions without following steps in formulas. In a similar vein, word substitutions in art/folk song lyrics in foreign languages are “colored” and “shaped” by how I see and hear the words in my mind’s eyes and ears. So, easy to recall, for me, difficult to reproduce for any Normal or logical process.)

So, as I have said, have fun cracking my passwords. I’m sure there are some really Odd folks out there, somewhere, who’d enjoy doing just that. 🙂

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Silly Question

In a paragraph about noticing and recalling details, a writer asked,

“If someone asked you the last time you wore something blue, you’d be hard pressed to give an exact date and time, right?”

Wrong. I usually wear blue jeans. When I wear a suit, I usually wear a blue Oxford shirt with it, or a white Oxford shirt and a tie, almost always with some blue in it, to pick up the blue in the suit (yeh, after years of having a closet full of suits, sport coats, etc., I have pared things down to a couple of sport coats–one of them navy blue–and one suit, mainly just for weddings and funerals). Slacks and shirt? Usually a blue shirt.

This one would be easy-peasy.

Now, the last time I wore yellow. . .

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Understanding “Gender”

To properly understand the many different fantasy “genders” that have come about in recent years, a trip down etymology lane might be helpful:

“gender (n.)
c. 1300, “kind, sort, class, a class or kind of persons or things sharing certain traits,” from Old French gendre, genre “kind, species; character; gender” (12c., Modern French genre), from stem of Latin genus (genitive generis) “race, stock, family; kind, rank, order; species,” also “(male or female) sex,” from PIE root *gene- “give birth, beget,” with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups. ”

When speaking of _mankind_**, then, one can speak now of three specific “genders”:

male
female
batsh*t crazy.

The last class is the catch-all for all the delusional folks who are in denial of reality and claim to be some weird fantasy “gender.”
___________________________

**”mankind” here is a poke in the eye to snowflake “batsh*t crazies”

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The Reasons I Do Not Carry a Handgun

Sure, I have the right to carry openly or concealed (and I have), but there are several reasons why I do not normally, habitually, carry a handgun on my person.

I’m gettin’ old, folks. Arthritis and difficulty quickly transitioning between near and far make sighting/aiming and firing a handgun an exercise in “maybe accuracy,” and that’s just not good enough to assure NOT hitting what I do not want to.

I also live in one of the safest places in the world, safer from physical attacks on my person than almost anywhere else in America that has people in it. *heh* That means that others around me are also pretty darned unlikely to experience physical aggression initiated against them (by anyone other than law enFARCEment ossifers, that is).

Sidebar: perhaps one of the reasons it’s so safe here in America’s Third World County™ is that firearms of all kinds outnumber inhabitants by quite a healthy margin, and many folks do carry a handgun both openly and concealed. Gives me warm fuzzies. 🙂

The only reason I might carry a handgun, given my circumstances, would be if I were to go out walking in “snake country” or “feral pig country,” and in that case, I’d probably need to carry a S&W Governor loaded in alternate chambers with .410 gauge shotshells and .45 long colt (each for a different contingency). The .410 (loaded with birdshot, for snake use) would pretty much obviate concerns about really fine aiming, though I’d just have to hope for decent enough luck if a feral pig got his mad on.

Still, even in such cases, I’d probably prefer to keep my head on a swivel and note issues well enough in advance to back away from a venomous snake or take to a tree in case of a feral pig.

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The Essential Key to a Long, Healthy Life

Choose your grandparents wisely. *heh*

I am very fortunate to have only one prescription med. (At my age, that’s more than a bit atypical, I know; I’m very, very fortunate.) The thing is, my Wonder Woman is prescribed the same med, same dosage, as a part of her _wide array_ of prescription meds.

She gets all hers from a local pharmacy using her employer-provided health insurance prescription drug benefit. I make a trip ~15 miles out of town once a year to pick up a year’s supply (Yeh, I brow-beat my doctor into writing it for 360 tabs, which–given my roughly 80% compliance–means I have about eight months’ backup supply, after all these years on the same med) at a discount pharmacy, using no insurance.

My cost is 1/6 her cost, after her co-pay.

(The point isn’t where she likes to buy her prescription meds. It’s still pretty cheap, so I don’t really care where she buys her meds. Wherever she’s comfortable doing so is just fine by me. It’s her decision, after all, anyway.)

As I said up front, I consider myself VERY fortunate to only “require” one prescription med for a condition I could take care of myself, and used to, with about 20 minutes of slow, controlled breathing twice a day, but I told my doctor that was just boring and requested a chemical solution.

I took GREAT care selecting my grandparents. . .

All I really have to deal with concerning health issues are creeping arthritis and this damnable tinitus. Oh, well, for the one I can lie to myself and say that pain is just weakness leaving the body. It doesn’t work, but it makes me laugh at myself. For the other, well, I just call my tinitus “the voices in my head” (Oh! those dulcet, belltoned ‘voices’! #gagamaggot), and blame it for my various insanities.

*heh*

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I Like Speedify for Other Reasons, Too

This may either be a side effect of using Speedify VPN or it could be for other, unknown reasons, but as soon as we started using Speedify VPN, FINALLY my ISP has stopped reporting fake usage and threatening to bill us for overages on our “data allowances.” In fact, since we began using Speedify, we’ve yet to approach 30% usage of our ridiculously low data allowance.

Co-inky-dink? Maybe. I seriously doubt the data compression Speeify does is enough to account for the HUGE drop in reported usage, but it could be. . .

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The “Great Flood of 2017”

. . . and it’s not over, yet.

Taking a break from The Great Flood of 2017. *heh*

Earlier today, the water in our back yard rose to about 1.5 feet [correction: that was when I got up Saturday morning. Later investigation of our west basement wall and a storage area under the house not directly connected to the basement rvealed the high water mark to be at least 3.5 feet above the level of the basement floor] on our basement walkout. Almost 3” of water in the basement, because weather-proofing on the door was not quite proof against the pressure. Packed sandbags against that door to slow the flow, and then I left to get more supplies.

Water has receeded a GREAT deal, now, but it’s still raining and more rain to come, so. . .

As soon as I finish here, I’ll be at that back door improving the waterproofing and stacking more sandbags, spreading pool shock on the 1.5” of water that did not make its way back out as the waters receeded (partly because I had sandbagged it so heavily, no doubt), and then, later, pumping as much of the rest out as possible, gathering everything that was irreparably damaged for disposal, then. . . stripping out all the carpet, deep cleaning everything that was even dampened, and finishing the floors out. . . in other than carpet.

But some of that will have to wait until the power is restored. *heh*

Oh, and as usual, when power is out for an extended time, we can expect the city to issue a water quality warning. That’s OK, since I have a bunch of 4-gallon containers of “wash water” for hygeine and a LOT more (in gallon and individual serving bottles) of potable water put back.

  • Pantry with plenty of food? Check.
  • Adequate emergency water and means to treat more (filters/purification methods)? Check.
  • Camp stove and fuel? Check.
  • Bugout bags? Check.

Etc.

We’re OK and will remain OK, it looks like, even though the water’s going to rise again tonight.

On the positive side, we’ve been meaning to get to the downstairs remodel, so this just moves that to the top of the list. Plus, while there are only two weeks left in my Wonder Woman’s school contract for this year (not counting Summer School), school will no doubt be called off for the district, at least for a few days, given the countywide flooding (and this is exactly the kind of situation where the governor has waived requirements for total days in the past).

N.B. We are NOT within the “100 Year Flood” flood plain (I have FEMA maps showing where the local flood plains are, and one specifically detailed for our property), so this flood exceeded those boundaries by quite a bit.

All these pictures were taken at least eight hours after peak waters. If you look carefully at the house on the right in the first video below (the house is south of us on an adjoining street), you can see the high water mark. Note also that at the time of these pics/videos, the waters had receded at our house to well back off our property and back well within the “100-year” flood plain as designated by the FEMA maps.

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Danger! Danger!

Back when I was a lad, I used to have some seriously dangerous thoughts. For example, driving “into town,” as I thought of it, in my ’53 Chevy, there was a place in the road where the road curved to the left and ascended a wee bit. To the right, just over the curb and a wee bit of verge was an arroyo. Every now and then I wondered what it would be like to just keep going straight and launch myself off the roadway. Oh, these weren’t serious thoughts, and I was in no way (consciously) suicidal, but every now and then. . .

This morning, I had another such “dangerous thought” as I reached into the fridge to get the cream for our coffees. I almost picked up the buttermilk thinking, “I wonder what buttermilk in coffee would taste like?”

DANGER! DANGER!

*heh*

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Always Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight

Because one should take a knife (or several) everywhere one goes, anyway. Now, using a knife at a gun fight is a good idea or not, may depend on the circumstances. I have been (I believe) reliably informed that at the right distance, and in the right circumstances, a knife can be more useful than a handgun.

It would take a willingness to be up close, personal, and very, very bloody, though. I imagine it would help to have gutted a few deer and pigs beforehand. I’ve only used rubber knives for simulating the former, but field dressing game is mainly just a bit messy.