Well, this would be MY choice for a 2016 Dhimmicrappic presidential “dream team”. . . and a guy can still dream, can’t he? *heh*
It’ds Definitely the Little Things. . .
So, lil discarded netbook with a couple of borked motherboard connections (keyboard, mushpad–result of spilled liquid, IIRC) being used as a “nettop” with external monitor and wireless kbd/mouse combo. Works pretty well, except. . . *sigh* DEAD SLOW.
Hmmm. . . what could be causing this? Win7 Pro (an upgrade from the Win7 Basic that came on the lil thing) w/2GB RAM should at least run OK–not blazingly fast, but OK. Ah! A service to cut background noise from microphone use is eating processor cycles like crazy! Disabled that (since I don’t use the built-in mic) and. . . runs OK, MUCH better than before.
It’s the little things, definitely the little things.
Oh, using the lil netbook/nettop temporarily while waiting for a part for the computer usually attached to this monitor. All the data files I need are on an external drive, and all the apps I need (standard app installs here at twc) are on the lil device, so, I can limp along with “OK” instead of “nice and fast” for a while.
Oh, rabbit trail: EVERYONE should use Ninite Install and PC Decrapifier when setting up a Windows box of any kind, IMO. PC Decrapifier is great for removing unwanted, pre-installed crap from an off-the-shelf computer, and Ninite Installer is a great way to quickly and easily install one’s own custom suite of apps.
Pubschool=Prisons for Kids?
[UPDATE: See, “Last Thursday, I Lied”. be sure to Read the Whole Thing®.]
[Note: I have family members who are REAL teachers and know at least a few more REAL teachers. Heck, I have even known three–THREE–pubschool administrators who were actually worthwhile uses of the oxygen they consumed. Really! Still. . . ]
Pubschool isn’t entirely “prison for kids”. . . but it’s usually the next worst thing. Pubschool certainly was no picnic for me. People kept interrupting my learning to “teach” me things that were on THEIR schedule. . . *heh*
From a Salon article, School is a prison — and damaging our kids:
“. . .the more scientists have learned about how children naturally learn, the more we have come to realize that children learn most deeply and fully, and with greatest enthusiasm, in conditions that are almost opposite to those of school.”
Well, especially for boys, for whom pubschool is often a kind of prison camp designed to make them into girls 1, or ANY kid who’s in the second standard deviation above the norm or better on any standard IQ test. “Odds” of all kinds find pubschool to me mind-numbing torture as they are REQUIRED to fit into the box. . . and find the box to be far, far too small.
But. . . the problem is this, though: how can a society educate 2 its population in such a way as to maximize the number of useful, productive citizens? Assembly line “prisons for kids” has been the answer for many years, though good teachers–REAL teachers–do everything they can to minimize the “prison” and “assembly line” aspects and encourage real learning. Oh, but that’s another problem: where does one find REAL teachers in numbers great enough to overcome the disadvantages of the system itself, the “millstones” of pubschool administrators *gag* and the plethora of remote-educrat-meddling they implement?
Education 2 ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. . .
1Christina Hoff Sommers, The War Against Boys. From a review:
“Sommers, a philosopher by education and a mother of two boys, shows that the trend she identified in the late 1990s to see boys as defective girls and therefore somehow in need of retooling has continued, and its effects have spread.”
2“Educate” has come to mean, more and more, simply “propagandize, brainwash.” Real education leads from darkness to light. What is created by the system of remote educrats promulgating rules for pubschool administrators to use cutting oxygen from the brains of teachers and students alike being implemented in a system of regimentation, indistinguishable from a prison regime, INTENDED (see Dewey, et al) to turn children into useful little cogs in an industrial machine is a kind of software lobotomization that seems to be designed by a conspiracy of dunces to make the lowest common denominator universal. *sigh* I am in awe of teachers–REAL teachers–who can do battle against this monstrosity day in and day out–actually bringing light to some students!–without going out of their everlovin’ gourds. Such people are amazing.
Passing thought. . .
I hold teachers–real teachers–in the highest respect. “Educators” (those who are in the “edumacation game” for the ego strokes or the tenure cushion, etc.) notsomuch. I wish I knew more teachers and fewer games players and tenure trackers marking time to retirement.
And, though sadly it would do harm to the 2% who are worth anything at all, I’d be happy to see all pubschool administrators relegated to chain gangs making little rocks out of big ones. At least they could do no harm to society there.
Thatisall.
Yet Another Quick Tip for Windows Users
[And a bonus tip at the end.]
Every now and then, a scan with the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer is just a Good Thing to do.
My most recent scan with the tool on the lil lappy I’m using to post this turned up two “problems”–one of which wasn’t, for me. Apparently, an update of M$Office 2010 had failed and for some reason Windows Update had borked on its responsibility to clue me in on the fact. Bad Windows Update, bad! *heh* Fixed that, even though I rarely use M$Office 2010 (I prefer LibreOffice–horse races and all that). The other problem? My login password for Windows hasn’t been changed in a while. Notaproblem for me. My Login password for this user account is one of the very, very few passwords I’ve deliberately elected to NOT change regularly, for reasons of my own.
All-in-all, an encouraging scan. But do keep in mind: the tool is a BASELINE scanner. Generally, the things it scans for should form a foundation of your security steps.
See more here on basic computer security: Gizmo’s Freeware Security Wizard Walk through the Wizard to get more recommendations for your own Windows computer use.
By Jove! I Think He’s Got It!
USPS Changing Its Name?
Is “USPS” beginning to mean, “United States Postal Screw-you”? I mean, hours cut (including, at our local PO, an hour SHUT DOWN in the middle of the day and NOTHING past 10:00 on Saturday), packages “lost” and 1/10 of employees NOT surly, petty tyrants.
In recent weeks/months my Wonder Woman has had a rash of things ordered online, sent but NOT delivered by USPS. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems more and more USPS packages are “going missing” (*cough* stolen by postal workers *cough*) in recent times. . .
Whenever I can I specify either UPS or Fedex delivery. At least that way whatever it is has a chance of getting here in a timely fashion. . . or even just getting here at all.
Hey, USPS! Screw you.
Check Different Angles Out, First
I occasionally see/hear frustrated people writing/muttering (or louder) about revolution as the solution the “feddle gummint” seems to be pushing its citizens subjects towards.
Better think long and hard on that, is my first council. We’re a loooooong way from needing a “solution” that, urm, revolutionary. Besides, as a “Dwarven Rifleman” (interesting fictional character) observed,
“It may seem a fine thing in song or story to be ankle-deep in the blood of your enemies but in reality it’s slippery, smells bad and is nearly impossible to get out of your socks afterwards.”
Yeh. Think long and hard before electing to pursue a course that would likely ruin every pair of socks you own. . . Just reconsider, mmK?
“Don’t Know Much About History”: One of the Reasons the US is Getting a “Swirly” from Reality
Victor Davis Hanson beats a drum often heard here at twc:
“Our geographically and historically challenged leaders are emblematic of disturbing trends in American education that include a similar erosion in grammar, English composition, and basic math skills.”
Remember third world county‘s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom:
“In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”
And remember also that “literacy” is not just being able to decode the written word, either facilely or laboriously. It’s being able to do that AND having a goodly store of useful knowledge gained thereby. Anything less and one is simply either a useful idiot fit for deploying in the service of evil or a completely useless idiot, good for nothing in particular.
Sadly, somewhere near 75-80% of Americans seem to be one or the other of those two idiot alternatives.
Monsieur Who?
I am not easily irked (*gales of hilarious laughter from friends and family*), but my gizzard’s a bit chapped by all the self-appointed pundits who’ve recently discovered Alexis (Charles-Henri Clérel) de Toqueville’s “Democracy in America” and cite quotations from it attributing them merely to “Toqueville”.
*sigh*
My French profs would be peeved. M. de Toqueville, were he alive today, might also be a bit put out. (Note the proper form above. *heh*) Oh, well. The talking heads and self-appointed pundits may well have the right of it in these days of seriously degraded language. . . I’m sure their usage is Just Fine with all the folks who just DGARA about such things (meaning, of course, the entire Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, their remoras in the Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries and the rest of the promoters of the lowest common denominator).