Category: FYI

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Lotsa FUD* Goin’ On. . .

*Fear, Uncertainly, and Doubt

With the national election only days away, the FUD is strong in the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, social media, and just out and about “on the street.” I see/hear talk about nuclear war with Russia, a “feddle gummint” crackdown on dissenters–including fear that “they” will be “shooting us down in the street,” and so on.

Well, I’m glad to live where I do. Yeh, there’s some of that FUD floating around here in America’s Third World County™, but while “they” can try “shooting us down in the street,” it wouldn’t fly here, where firearms outnumber citizens by at least six to one, retired military are in very high ratio to the rest of the county population, we have very nearly Afganistan-like terrain (with even better cover most of the year, nearly as many cave systems/square mile, many of which are on no one’s maps or records–because PRIVATE, and excellent backwoods trails and waterways for transport), and the local National Guard unit would _definitely_ be on the side of the citizens. Heck, my neighbors and I could probably outgun the local LEOs, not that we’d need to if a “feddle gummint they” started trying to push in. Again: would side with citizens, like the local NatGuard unit.

“Red Dawn” was bush league by comparison to Third World County™ standards.

And then there’s the prevalent attitude: “Let them come.”

BTW, the county was almost precisely balanced between Repugnicant stalwarts and Ron Paulistas in the last prexy election, with nearly as many Paulista write-ins as votes for Romney. Neither Dhimmicrp vote counted for much at all.)

Oh, where is “America’s Third World County™”? Nowhere near my IP address. . . 🙂

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A Note About Book Blurbs

If you read a book blurb that includes comments like,

“absolutely suspenseful” and “an ending you’ll never see coming!”

. . . just know that the normative translation into words reflecting reality for those phrases is “utterly boring” and “entirely predictable.”

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Something Old, Something New. . .

I read. A lot. But lately, many of the books I’ve been reading have been. . . blah.

So, a changeup (the “something new”)

Re-read old favs

Great Books of the Western World. I have a nearly worn out set, and another, in “library binding,” that I’ve read in very little. So, re-read the set over the next year or so.

A different Bible reading plan: chronological. Yeh, read the books/passages in a close approximation of when they were written, with an eye to also reconciling chronology of events, when possible (“chronology of events” hardly applies to the books of poetry. . . for the most part. . . sorta). That’s an approach I’ve not taken before. It’ll work well with re-reading the GBWW.

Something new: I have a couple of different versions/formats of The Harvard Classics in ebook formats now. I can read that set, too, reading around the books included in the GBWW–or even reading some of those in ebook format, if that proves to be more convenient.

Slack off on buying new books. Just buy the “must-haves,” and let the rest go. I’ve spent more time writing reviews of books that fall into the category of “A note to the writer: JUST STOP! Quit writing until you’ve at least passed a remedial English course, AND are willing to pay competent, literate sopy and line editors to fix your crap, mmmK?”

All in all, I think the reading goals outline above will make for a much better experience over the next few months/year.

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About That FarceBook Thingy

FarceBook is. . . interesting, but primarily in the “that’s an interesting train wreck” way. I find myself drawn back to watch and even react to the various inanities, stupidities, and rare–more and more extremely rare–status updates that have any usefulness (apart from just observing “The Weird”). Heck, I’m not even all that interested in my “family” FarceBook account, since the only family I’m really interested in staying up with are my wife, kids and Mother, and I have face-to-face (or in Mother’s case, phone-to-phone) contacts for that.

But. . . “The Weird” draws me back.

And then it repulses me again.

The Stupid is also very powerful on FarceBook, and its practitioners are immune to mocking (Dunning-Kruger and a “safe places” mentality). Besides, mocking self-made morons–not born that way; self-enstupiated–isn’t really good for me in the long run. It feels soooooo good, but is sooooo wrong. . . or is it? Is NOT mocking self-made morons, just ignoring their obstinate stupidities, just enabling their destructive behavior?

I dunno, and more and more I care less and less about them.

But they are fascinating. Ah! I think I have it now! FarceBook is a 21st Century freak show! Small doses may be interesting, even amusing, but a steady diet of fake interactions with family, stupid “posts” and comments by self-made morons, so-called “memes,” and suchlike is just not productive.

Methinks a weekly check-in to see how things are going in the nuthouse might be OK, but a steady diet of the Freak Show would rot my brain.

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Just How bad Is Mediacom Internet Service?

Let me offer a data point. Mediacom has a 250GB/month “data allowance.” Today is the first day of a new billing cycle, so the data allowance was supposedly cleared.

The cable “modem” was disconnected from 2200 hours 07/21 until 0815 on 07/22. Mediacom reports that at 0820, we had used 3GB of our monthly data allowance.

Yeh, by checking our email between 0815 and 0820 we used 3GB of our data allowance. Right.

No, just more Mediacom “service.”

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Warning Shots

Always fire a warning shot. There are two main camps on the subject of warning shots: in the air and into the ground. I demur. The best warning shot is center of mass. It conserves ammo and definitely gets the message across with little chance of misunderstanding. (Center of mass warning shots also minimize collateral damage.)

One should always continue offering proper warning shots until an aggressor’s off switch is fully engaged, although, if the aggressor’s off switch is not located near his center of mass, a polite tap-to-the-head warning shot might be required. Oh, be ultra polite and make it two.

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Little Things. . .

I made my two favorite cutting boards as gifts (for my grandmothers) 54 years ago, and, after 18 years in one case and 32 years in the other case, they came back to me. I use them daily–far more often than any of my other cutting boards. One I use for meats, only and the other for veggies. The system seems to work for me, and most of the time I don’t need anything larger than these.

mahogany pig

walnut-maple pig

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Well, THIS Is Gonna Be Fun

Well, for values of fun that include making finicky repairs on small electronics with arthritic fingers. *heh*

Hardware fault on the lil lappy I’ve been using for the past six years for casual Internet browsing, email, etc. while away from my primary computer (which is any time I’m sitting with my Wonder Woman and she’s on her lappy). So, backup lil lappy. And this time, when I say “lil” I mean :tiny”–a discarded netbook I rehabbed and installed Linux Mint on. Works surprisingly well, apart from

1. Cramped keyboard *feh* that makes typos almost certain, and
2. Crappy, tiny mushpad, and
3. Difficulty disabling the crappy, tiny mushpad, making typing even more of a chore–strictly “Biblical method” typing (“seek and ye shall find” *sigh*)

I will figure out that last one. . .

Meanwhile, decision time: definitively diagnose and repair the other lappy or replace it? I don’t really want to purchase a Win10 laptop, so pickings might be slim. For a casual use lapptop, Win7 works pretty well, shich is the reason I had kept that one at Win7 Pro. I like the way Linux Mint works just fine on this lil thing (apart from the obscurantist nature of disabling the touchpad–although it’s probably a simple task and I’m just missing something that’s staring me right in the face. Only one cuppa joe and all that.*heh*)

Anywho, at least most of my data from my regular ole lappy is secure elsewhere, apart from recent bookmarks and the like. The only really irksome things about replacing it with a Linux or Win8.1/10 compy would be

  1. The PITA of putting Win7 version of Freecell on one (it has a more attractive look than any other version I’ve seen out there for other OSes, and I use it for “Freecell Zen” mind-clearing)
  2. Transferring the record of nearly 10,000 to 0 win-loss would be nice, too. *heh*

Yeh, like that is such a big deal, eh? 😉

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Occasionally. . .

*sigh* Every now and then, I find myself reading five or so books at once. This is one of those times. (Plus a new Bible reading plan I’d not tried before.) I know how it happens. Books that are just barely well-written and interesting enough to continue reading, but not well-written and interesting enough to read straight through are the usual culprits. Every now and then, a book I need to put down and think about, or just absorb, for a while before continuing makes my reading list as well.

Now? One hardcopy book. A book on my “non-fiction Kindle” and another on my “fiction Kindle” plus three more in different instances of Amazon’s Kindle Cloud Reader. Between the six, they hold my attention. *sigh*

And then there’s that new Bible reading program. Ten chapters/day, each from a different book with specific instructions to just read them straight through without stopping to think on the text. Tried that. Can’t. So, I generally read half the day’s readings and then go do other things, while the chapters I’ve read percolate. Then, at the end of the day, I finish the readings.

In between, my daily work/chores/activities and. . . the other books.

I prefer keeping it to just one book at a time, but sometimes. . . nope. Not happening.