Month: May 2019

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Pet Win10 Peeve

There was once a time when Windows 10 was not as bad at managing local network connections. Sure, it was a couple of orders of magnitude slower than Windows 7 in doing so, but at least, once sharing & etc. were “turned on” things were fairly easily (if, again, slowly) “seeable,” but as the inevitable and very nearly unavoidable “update” cycles have progressed, access to local network resources has regressed.

If saving a file from the internet, for example, it doesn’t matter what browser I use, whether a VPN is engaged or whatever, if I want to save it to anything BUT my local machine, I have to type in the IP address of the resource I want to save it to. Then, it I only have to just twiddle my thumbs waiting on Win10’s execrably slow access of LAN resources.

Similarly, if attempting to access other LAN resources (computers, NASes, etc.) via “Windows Explorer” file management. . . no network resources available, no matter WHAT I have set up in “Network and Internet Settings.” In fact, every now and then, at apparently random times, the stupid “Network Discovery is Turned off” error pops up. I check, and no, it is turned on. Turn off/back on anyway. Semi-fixed: no error popping up, but still have to either use manually-created shortcuts placed on desktop, on toolbar, etc., or type in the resource address. (Yes, as a result of Win10’s stupidity, I have finally given ALL LAN resources fixed IP addresses).

Oh, and yes, I have made sure all the dependent services, etc., are set to start automatically and are running, and that–again–network sharing is set properly for a “private” network, etc., etc. Me$$y$oft’s Win10 still screws it up, usually sooner than later.

It’s as though Me$$y$oft engineers have sat and thought, and thought, and thought, and said (collectively), “Here’s something that will REALLY screw with users. Let’s do it!”

#feh

Why couldn’t Me$$y$oft at least be like Linux developers and fix something and then move on to creating more problems.

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Proverbs 3:5-6

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your path.”

Of all the systems devised by humans to deal with ethics and morality, Pragmatism, as a system is IMO, least dependent on emotions and biases, but Pragmatism fails at the point where incomplete, inaccurate human knowledge intersects with partial and faulty understanding of that incomplete and inaccurate knowledge. Other system that are more dependent on preconceptual biases (Pragmatism has some of its own, you know) and that either assume more knowledge than is available or are even more blind to their own misunderstandings are even less appealing that Pragmatism.

Unless one is both omniscient and infinitely wise, the best one can hope for is that one’s own understanding of circumstances and consequences is partial, and one is as likely as not, if one relies only on one’s own knowledge and understanding, to be quite wrong in predicting ultimate outcomes. Short-term outcomes? One might have a better chance, but relying on guidance from Someone who knows juuuuust might be a better idea, hmm?

Oh, for the record, I choose my guidance wrong far more often than I should. *sigh*

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“Last” Day of 2018-2019 Pubschool. . .

. . .here in America’s Third World County™. . . until Summer School starts on May 28. *heh*

The last couple of weeks of pubschool reveal its essential nature as “prisons for kids” or “glorified daycare.” *sigh*

Oh, and when did “graduation” from eighth grade (or sixth grade or KINDERGARTEN) get to be a big deal? OK, maybe I could understand making a big deal of eighth grade graduation back in my grandfather’s day when an eighth grade education carried some sort of meaning, but now? #feh “Here’s your meaningless piece of paper certifying that you are ‘graduating’ to a status of lowest of the low, wandering generality in a sea of your elders, bottom of the pecking order. Buh-bye!”

And kindergarten graduation?!? “Congratulations! You are no longer just a tadpole! You are now a tadpole with a piece of paper you can’t read and the start of being a tadpole with legs! Enjoy your next twelve years of regimentation!”

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Wanna “Make a Difference”?

Every time I read or hear someone say “I want to make a difference in the world” with no real qualifier denoting WHAT they want to affect and HOW, I feel an urge to toss my cookies.

HITLER “made a difference in the world,” So did STALIN, and POL POT, and RACHEL CARSON and MOHAMMED — mass murderers one and all.

What KIND of difference do you want to make to WHAT set of conditions? If those bare parameters aren’t defined, then please just stay home and sit on your butt. That way, the “difference” you make will at least not actively harm others.

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Has It Been THAT Long?

Yes, it has.

I put a new enameled steel roof on TWC Central six years ago, just a year after a neighbor two doors down had a new asphalt shingle roof put on. Our new rood has proven to be a Good Thing: improved energy use, DRY (really solidly improved weather resistance), and–a surprise to us–quieter than the old roof (maybe the insulating gap helps there? *shrugs*).

Oh, and the neighbor with a seven-year-old asphalt shingle roof? Had it replaced this week.

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“Irk Me” #7,356

I am currently reading a book by an otherwise fairly competent and literate writer who regularly and consistently misuses “utilize” for “use.” The two words are not the same. *sigh*

Sadly, the writer also has no clue what the differences are between “bring” and “take,” so not as competent and literate as I had assumed.

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Formal Literacy: A Moving Target

Yet another example of why formal literacy is an always moving target, something one can strive for for a lifetime but only approach: I just discovered “Noctes Atticae” — “Attic Nights” — (“Attic” here referring to the nature of the tales contained in the 2nd Century volume of fables, since they were or were based on old Grecian folk tales, fables, and myths). It’s a good example of the “holes and gaps, lacks and losses, absences, silences, impalpabilities and the like” in my own literacy. Specifically, I was reminded last night of the fable of “Androcles and the Lion” (similar in plot and moral to Aesop’s “The Lion and the Mouse”), but I did not know until I reviewed the fable today that the first known statement of the fable was in Aulus Gellius’s “Noctes Atticus.”

Now, I feel a need to read Gellius’s collection to see that else I have missed. Unfortunately, since I only have the little Latin I have gleaned through other readings and via interpolations from other languages largely derived from Latin, I’ll be best served to read one of the available translations. *shrugs* I don’t think I can effectively manage to shoehorn Latin lessons into my “scattergun” autodidact program, now.

I’ll never have read enough to achieve formal literacy that satisfies me. . . or, it seems, closely approximates the literacy of some I have known.

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More “News” in category: “Inventions for the Lazy, Stupid, and Incompetent”

Special lil pot holders to fit over the handles of pans, because using an ordinary pot holder is tooooo haaarrrd!

As a special invention for stupid, incompetent, and lazy people, it’s right on up there with special lil tools for cracking eggs and special-deshul tools to prevent “onion tears.”

These kinds of things are for people who were voted off the short bus for being too stupid.

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Flawed Test

Our state’s mandated standardized test for school kids is called the MAP Test. I submit that it is fatally flawed. As far as I can determine, there are NO orienteering questions on the test at all.

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Food Fun

I’ve been enjoying making meals for my Wonder Woman while I abstain from food for a short while — short 3 day fast. A “keto” regimen really ameliorates any food cravings. extra fun: cleaning out and reorganizing the food pantry and reorganizing the kitchen stores, as well. *heh* I’ve not even been tempted to plan meals from the pantry items.

Not eating meals, snacking, etc., has also freed up time to do more things like working on the food pantry. Another thing about doing this coming off a keto regimen is that I have no “sugar lows” and activity–like some exercise in addition to climbing up and down a stepladder to rearrange dry goods and canned goods *heh*–levels remain easy to maintain. . . so far (a little over halfway through my selected time frame). In fact, the keto regimen has apparently been really helpful in moderating my blood sugar levels (at least according to both my last labs and amelioration — more like elimination, actually — of symptoms such as occasional dizziness, headaches, or unusual tiredness after going without food for a while). Regarding blood sugar issues: a couple of years ago, my doctor expressed concern about elevated levels of fasting blood sugar — not diabetic levels, sort of pre-pre-diabetic levels. The keto regimen is one of the things I adopted to deal with that issue (on my own; I represented it to my doctor as “eliminating bread, potatoes, etc. from my diet. *heh* I know the bias my doctor has expressed about dietary fats — another story where my choices have born results that contradict “received wisdom” *heh*).

Anywho. . . Enjoying the time being “foodless” a lot more than in past times I chose to do this.