Category: The Kitchen Sink

A 2012 reminder on a basic computer security habit: Get and install AND USE Secunia PSI to help keep various softwares on your Windows computers updated, fully patched with all known security patches.

Oh, and while Microsoft is at work updating Microsoft Security Essentials (and re-rebranding it back to “Windows Defender”–see here for an offline version) for Windows 8, if you want to pair it with the most consistently “highest rated” free anti-malware software–AVG Free–it’s now OK to do so. MSSE has always “worked well with others” on my systems, but AVG Anti Virus Free 2012 has been designed to work much better with other anti-malware products than before. If you like having a second opinion handy and can spare the processor cycles to have two AVs running, that’d be how I’d pair a couple up.

DO NOTE: AVG is pretty aggressive about flagging things it considers “hacking tools” or other powerful low level software tools as dangerous, and it will move such things to its “virus vault” by default. For example, it really, really doesn’t like tools like ProduKey (a tool to simply look up product keys for Microsoft software already installed on a computer–handy if Microsoft “Genuine (DIS)Advantage” suddenly forgets your copy of M$Office is registered already *sigh*) and Ophcrack, which I keep as a current ISO file for whenever I need to burn another copy to help someone out who’s forgotten their own Windows password (sadly, it happens more often than you might think; I put it down to all the autolobotomy kits that’re pushed by the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries, etc. *heh*). So, if you decide to use it, and if you use such tools, always double check its actions.

Just sayin’.

And as always, just practice halfway sensible safe computing. Scan everything you download before invoking it. Have some sort of reiable link scanner installed. I like the combo of Opera Browse and WOT (Web of Trust), but AVG’s Link Scanner is very good. I also recommend that Windows users who want internet filtering try OpenDNS Free rather than using the Microsoft Parental Controls feature.

Of course, there’s a lot more* to maintaining nominal security on Windows computers, but these are Good Things.

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*Strong passwords, changed frequently? Yep. Both software and “hardware” firewalls? Yep. The highest level of encryption available for one’s wireless network? Yep. And so on.

On the “strong passwords” front… I may be overdoing it a wee tad, but, well, let me tell you how to crack mine.

1. Have a database with the lyrics of many 100s of songs, as I recall/sing them, in 5 or more languages.
2. Find out which song I’ve selected for a particular password’s generation.
3. Begin compiling all the passwords that can be generated by selecting the first letter of each word in one or more of the verses from the selected song (complete with any special character substitutions and capitalizations determined according to my own, idiosyncratic, principles). Most of these passwords run to 64 or more characters.
4. Voilà! You have cracked one of my passwords! Unless I just changed it, of course.

🙂

BTW, such passwords are very easy for me to recall, but “I have a little list” in my safe, just in case I’m not around and family needs access to my stuff. That’s a different kind of security, but one to keep in mind.

Yeh, maybe Limeys ( ;-)) call it that, I dunno. Sounds British anyway. When I was a kid, we called the game, “Tic-Tac-Toe” and played it only when we were already bored to tears, so its complete predictability didn’t matter so much. Other folks apparently called it by other names, as this off-shoot discovered by Lovely Daughter demonstrates:

Busy. Tired, too.

“Pakistan warns U.S.: ‘You will lose an ally'”

*pfft* Don’t let the door hit ya where the Lord split ya. After all, what freakin’ kind of “ally” has Pakistan been, really? Oh, yeh. The kind of ally that gets real close so it can stab you in the back. That kind of ally. Kind of like France with a turban bomb instead of pommes frites and ripe Camembert.

Or, perhaps, Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind hype… though from what I’ve seen of citified wusses, it just might not be. WHat am I talking about? This.

Bat Terrorizes Passengers on Airplane

A bat got loose on an Atlanta-bound flight, forcing horrified passengers to duck for cover…

*feh* Now, I’ve not seen many bats, apart from some swooping around vacuuming up pests in the early evening or bat flghts from or into caves, but a bat loose on a plane “Terroriz[ing] Passengers”?

I can recall sitting in church with my wife and her folks in a southern Minnesota city 30-something years ago when a bat made its appearance, causing a (very) minor distraction from the worship service (folks near it–particularly children–seemed amused or entertained by its appearance). A middle-aged lady a couple of rows in front of us removed her Sunday hat and simply scooped it, trapping it very neatly. She then simply walked to the back of the sanctuary and I heard the doors open and close a couple of times. She came back and sat down.

I assumed she’d cleaned her hat, since she was once again wearing it.

Big. Deal.

Now, if it had been a wolf… “Good puppy!”

*heh*

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Rabbit trail: Oh, yeh. Met a wolf last summer–or so I was told. I thought it was just a very big, rangy Huskie or some such, and enjoyed petting and playing with it a bit while I was trying to make contact with the folks who lived on the property. Talked to a neighbor shortly thereafter and he asked me how I’d gotten by the wolf to get to his neighbor’s door. Apparently it has a ferocious reputation in the neighborhood and is the focus of lots of complaints, according to the guy I talked to. Could have been exaggeration, though. Still, I talked to the owner later at his place of employment (a local cop shop), and the wolf part (and difficulty most folks have getting to his front door) part were confirmed by him. He was kinda miffed at my reports of how friendly his “dog” was. *heh*

As more and more leftards desert the sinking ship of H0pe-n-Change, perhaps The Zero really is accidentally, unintentionally (minimally, reluctantly) uniting the electorate… at least as more and more leftards realize what many who have more active brain cells than a broken crock of 10-year-old spoiled* kimchi have known from the beginning: that The Zero has been a suit empty of anything but ambition for his whole life. As one Prime Leftard from the NYT put it just yesterday (08/07/2011),

Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted “present” (instead of “yea” or “nay”) 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues.–“What Happened to Obama’s Passion?”

Well, duh. Dumbass. “[B]ewitched by his eloquence” is just the first clue that Drew Westen, the author quoted above, has been spending too much time stirring his frontal lobe with a fork. If the idiot and his ilk couldn’t look past teleprompter readings that would have been embarrassing to an illiterate, redneck country preacher boy to see that The Zero’s qualifications for the job he was seeking just did not exist, and are seeing it only now, more than two-and-a-half years into a presidency that makes Dhimmi Kahtah look like a combination of George Washington, Solomon and Winston Churchill, then Drew Westen and his ilk are worse idiots than I thought when they originally drooled and felt shivers up their legs at the thought of The Zero as president.

But at least The Zero is so very, very, VERY bad at his job that even these submoronic idiots are awakening to what they and their fellow idiots have wrought.

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*BTW, I’m still trying to figure out how one can tell that kimchi is spoiled. I think the best thing to do is avoid it all, since separating out spoiled batches would seem to be impossible… And in that, politicians *gag-spew* remind me of kimchi.

Because what comes out of a Dhimmicrap’s mouth is deceptive… always.

Hmmm, kinda reminds me of some Mass MEdia Podpeople as well (although, what are the real differences between Dhimmicrap politicians *gag-spew* and Mass MEdia Podpeople apart from the size of audiences?).

Neither do I. So, why do you believe the weather man?

*heh*

I made a new BBQ sauce the other day.

3 Roma tomatoes, quartered
1/2 large Vidalia onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic
1/4 C balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
3 dime-sized dollops of AwesomeSauce–edit: I noted and linked the –wrong hot sauce; it’s Dave’s Insanity Sauce–hot sauce

Put everything but the vinegars a in a food processor and whir away until all is very finely minced.

Dump that and the vinegars in a saucepan, then add the Dave’s Insanity Sauce and stir. Bring it to a boil, then back it off and let it simmer a while. How long? I dunno. I think I let it go about 30 minutes. Oh, I added a little olive oil, which I didn’t bother to measure–probably 3 tablespoonsful–to the saucepan before adding the other ingredients.

Meanwhile, microwave a pint jar full of water until the water’s boiling well. Just before th next step, pour some of the boiling water to cover a lid (use a lid-and-ring Ball-or-Mason-type jar). It’s not going to really be water bath canning, cos it’s going straight into the fridge, but this will lessen the chances of contamination with something nasty.

When you think it’s pretty well come together and the tomatoes, especially, are cooked, dump it all back in the food processor and whir it until it’s smooth. Dump it, still hot, into the hot jar, cover with the lid and screw down the ring. Refrigerate. It’ll keep just as long as it takes to use it up, I suspect. It went very nicely on last night’s grilled burgers (just for Son&Heir and I–my Wonder Woman doesn’t partake of Holy Hotitudinousness *heh*).