Category: FYI

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Baby Steps…

A few additions and improvements to the new “Coffee Shrine” in the last week. The bamboo plate rack is installed and holds all the (unbroken *heh*) salad plates, which we normally treat as dinner plates, allowing the open storage of the dinner plates on the counter, using a different, horizontal storage, bamboo plate rack. The “fun” coffee cups are now hanging on the wall for quick access/use, and a bit more trim work is done, leaving just a few bits and pieces of trim, molding and some flooring work to finish things out. My Wonder Woman likes it, which is the single criterion that counts. 🙂

UPDATE: Painted “bowl” shelf and the part of the new (furniture-grade) plywood facing to the cabinet next to it last night. Primed some trim for painting and then application tonight. It’s coming. Still have the soffit above the sink/west wall cabinets to finish (plastering/painting), but it’s all coming along.

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In Answer to Overwhelming Demand…

(Well, Nicole did ask *heh*)

The back splash and countertop are essentially finished. The things left on that part of a long list of kitchen projects are minuscule tiny lil nanobits (redundancy> I can do that!).

Note lil things left (not back splash or countertop) in the pic below. The former “coffee shrine” (new one being built off camera) next to dishwasher is undergoing rehab. Reworked the shelves, which now need only more sanding and then treatment like the countertop, while the rest simply needs painting… which is awaiting the purchase of new paint. The color on the wall above the former “coffee shrine” is almost right, just not quite, and the new color will carry throughout the kitchen. Yeh, I know I just5 repainted the cabinets, but so? *heh*

Other things like finishing the window treatment and suchlike will also get a touch of my hand as things progress–and they are.

I do like the massive “trivets” made from marble left over from the backsplash. They total 1′ X 3′ area when slid together. Will make for nice holiday buffet serving and other hot stuff placement.

Of course, I ought to have cleaned up the messy sink, shut the “sponge drawer” and at least cleared out the mess in the former “coffee shrine” area, but, eh, had the camera handy, hot iron, striking and all that.

*sigh* Had the table saw in use yesterday and forgot to cut some trim. It’s cold out there where the saw is today, and time? Notsomuch. Oh, well. Lots still to do in the kitchen… before I can finish some projects in the living room, the master bedroom area and other things, so I’ll have my downtime hours pretty well full for the next bit and a piece.

Better to wear out than to rust out, right? 😉

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*sigh* eWeek Can’t Issue a Simple Warning About Malware Without Screwing Up the Lede

FBI Issues Warning about Phishing Attack. That’s a good thing to pass around, but eWeek’s Fahmida Y. Rashid needs to take some remedial English classes. Note the lede:

“FBI warned of a new spear-phishing campaign that tricks users into downloading Zeus malware and then looting their bank accounts.”

While one can infer that the author meant to say that the malware seeks to loot users’ bank accounts, that’s not what the sentence says. The lil “and” indicates the two linked phrases are equivalents referring to the phishing campaign” that “tricks users” into two actions: “downloading” and “looting”. While that’s obviously not what the author intended to say, it’d help promote literacy if the author would say what she means, viz.,

“FBI warned of a new spear-phishing campaign that tricks users into downloading Zeus malware which then attempts to loot their bank accounts.”

But, in terms of the warning, only very (very) stupid people will be fooled by this phishing malware attempt. Would YOU click on a link in a (SPAM!) message that purports to come from “the National Automated Clearing House Assocation (NACHA)” and tells you the link is to reset your banking credentials? If so, I have some great ocean front property in New Mexico I’d like to sell you and a bridge located in Brooklyn I just know would interest you.

Oh, and this absolutely stupid comment from another eWeek article by the same author really takes the cake:

It’s difficult for the savviest Internet user to identify some of the latest scams.

That was in the context of email inbox filtering to filter out dangerous attachments and other email. Really? It’s difficult for anyone with more active brain cells than a 10-year-old cracked crock of spoiled kimchi to identify some of the latest scams? Really? Ocean front property and a bridge in Brooklyn…

And the author follows that statement, in a paragraph “debunking” the idea that training users will enhance network security, with this:

While technology can be patched, the human brain can’t.

OK, I may have to give him that one. In fact, I’ll admit that he’s a good data point in support of the assertion.

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Super Thanksgiving

Double Celebration. It’s usually pretty easy to remember our wedding anniversary, since we were married the day after Thanksgiving (the rehearsal dinner even doubled as a Family Reunion Thanksgiving meal, served in the poshest of posh settings at my fav aunt & uncle’s home :-)).

This year, Thanksgiving falls on THE day, so it’s a double celebration.

33 years, 13 years on “second chance” (October 1998 was when my Wonder Woman “died” three times in one day and I got to practice CPR on a Not Dummy).

I’m a lucky, lucky guy, and proof of that old law of nature that states that the uglier the guy the better the woman he’ll end up with. *heh*

Son & Heir will be here. Lovely Daughter and her Estimable Spouse will be visiting his relations in Alabama this year. We’ll see them on Sunday. Heck, by then I may even have started assembling my Grolsh beer bottle Christmas “tree”. Or not, since the bay window’s full of my Wonder Woman’s plants this year.

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Micro-Mini Health Tip

First, a couple of disclaimers: This is just a single data point (me), and I’m not all that certain how really important some of the factors are, anyway. I mean, after all, health professionals can’t keep straight what they think is healthy from one decade to the next, anyway, so take this all with a grain of salt*.

At my checkup this year (yes, in the last four years I’ve actually had annual checkups, something very new in my life *heh*), the Dr was shocked (yes, shocked, I say) to see that I’d lost 25#. So? It’d been a year. Moving on. Continue reading “Micro-Mini Health Tip”

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Mini-Reno-Project

But something of a PITA to do…

The light over the kitchen sink: we’ve been meaning to “get around to it” for, well, since forever (OK, only sixteen years now *heh*). It was a piece of contractor’s junk fixture complete with a pull chain. *yech* Worst single example of electrical junk wiring in the house.

Plain old inertia just kept me out of it. Well, that and KNOWING it was going to be wired stupidly, and with the wiring concealed behind a 1’x1′ chase at the top of the kitchen (IOW, just completely wasted space), it wasn’t going to be a fun reno. Oh, and where was I going to put the switch and how did I want to wire it and… yeh, I let laziness get in the way, too.

But a couple of weeks ago, we found a fixture at Lowe’s that my Wonder Woman seemed to like:

Continue reading “Mini-Reno-Project”

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A Kid Again

In 1959, we were a single income family, even though both of my parents were college graduates. My dad was making decent money working in a field not known for particularly good incomes. Still with five children, the budget was sometimes a tad tight. So, when my folks decided to buy a World Book Encyclopedia with all the trimmings, including ten years of “yearbooks” and a large (no, REALLY large, “library-sized”) two-volume dictionary set, our lil family library grew by almost 25% overnight, and I found my backup reading material for the next few years.

Yes, there was always at least one volume of the set under my bed, close enough for a night time “sneak read”. Sometimes, it was just one of the two dictionary volumes (yes, for reading), but most often it was just a volume chosen according to some topic that had caught my fancy, then kept for further reading as one article led to another and another and…

And that’s how I get to be a kid again. For the last 18 years the web has been my go-to reading material for times when I’ve exhausted my stash of new books. It’s also been my substitute for an encyclopedia, since I never run out of things to learn. And thanks to my *cough* encyclopedic reading habits over the years, I have a skill set and basic knowledge base that allows me to filter out most crap.

And the resources–good quality resources–are effectively limitless, now, and not confined to one book case. Heck, I find myself re-reading classics online that are in a book case that’s literally within the reach of my right hand as I type these words.

And on top of being a library with more than enough resources to keep me in learning material for life, the web’s a source of amusement (dumbasses a-plenty to poke fun at! Yipee! *heh*), entertainment (I have a full movie list at Crackle, for example), contemporary information (I’ll not say it’s “news”) and interpersonal interactions.

But most of all, it’s a resource just jam packed with information that’s either new to me or in a new format that makes sense in a different way or old information that’s fun to re-read, review and cogitate over.

Sweet. Kid. In a candy store. Unlimited candy budget.

*sigh* I’ve entered my second childhood.

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Yes, I’m Back… Sorta

Since our PDG (Pretty Darned Good :-)) deal on our fridge (38% off a price that was already nearly 12% lower than MSRP), we’ve decided to keep an eye on large appliance prices just for kicks, and we’ve noticed something interesting.

In an economy where inflation is a fact of life and the dollar is worth less and less every day, both because of price inflation in general and because of the Fed’s devaluation of the dollar via flooding the economy with paper money coming off the presses far faster than the economy justifies, we’ve noticed something interesting: in general, prices are falling at the retail end on many major appliances from most manufacturers.

Why? I can only surmise at this point that the fact that consumer purchasing is way down is seriously impacting cash flow at these companies. They apparently feel they cannot absorb the costs of warehousing excessive inventory.

Expect more fall-off in manufacturing, leading to more layoffs and lower consumer purchasing, leading to… etc.

Unless the grossly obese “feddle gummint” chimp riding the economy’s back is forcibly removed (and put on a stringent diet), this cycle will likely continue.

Get yours (whatever that is) while the getting’s good. Just sayin’.

Link 1

Link 2

Go ahead. Do your own searches for “Emergency Preparedness,” “Survival,” etc. Then, if you’ve not already taken steps to increase your chances of pulling through Obama’s Great Depression of 2012, get moving on it. Now.

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AWOL

Not that I need your leave to be absent, but for the rest of this week I will be anyway. What can you do about it, eh? 😉

Come back next week when my usual babbling curmudgeonry will be back.