You've Got Your Pandemic on my Rhinocerous

Catholic priests are so upset about COVID-19....

HOW UPSET ARE THEY?

They're so upset, they're demanding clean COVID-19 tests from little boys before molesting them.

[you know you'll be telling that one at work tomorrow]



Cell Phone Stupidity

Verizon is offering a phone plan that contains a Yahoo Mail account.
Next they will offer a plan that includes an AOL account and a bag phone.

Comcast mistakenly published names, phone numbers, and addresses of nearly 200,000 customers who paid monthly fees to make their numbers unlisted.
Customers paid $3.50 to $5.50 monthly for this service. Comcast will not be satisfied until they have sucked every cent possible out of you. Then they'll find a way to get more.  This is a perfect example of a duopoly: Philly allowed only 2 cable companies to operate: Verizon and Comcast. More competition would drive prices to more reasonable levels.

• Are female urinals the answer to queues at the loos?
• What a tremendous idea... women's bladders are smaller than men's, so the lines are always longer.
• FEMALE URINALS? WTF?

Alex Jones ordered to stop selling fake coronavirus cures, by New York attorney general. Apparently generating coronavirus PANIC is ok, though. New York desperately wants to be the new California, and is working very diligently toward it. Like him or not, leave Alex alone. It truly is the responsibility of the buyer, not government. The AG referred to Jones' 'latest mistruths'.  I wonder if it's ok to sue an Attorney General for this. It's defamation, but apparently there are no statutes against that.  If nothing else, Alex is quite (inadvertently) funny. No one else would bullhorn the Bilderberg meetings.


Data of millions of eBay and Amazon shoppers exposed

To their credit, eBay and Amazon are not involved; instead it was a third party. So you're still exposed. What can you do?

• The White House told federal health agency to classify coronavirus deliberations
• Just cut it the f- out. There's always need for secrecy, but we're beyond out of hand now. We pay YOU, yet you decide what we can and can't see? Government for and by the people, not leading the country, doing what you feel like.
• If we had a real pandemic, these 'public servants' would classify that too. The people have no 'need to know.'

AT&T CEO pay rose to $32 million in 2019 while he cut 20,000 jobs

To be clear, I have no trouble with corporate salaries. I am not a socialist and don't believe these people are obligated to share their wealth. What bothers me is that he did it on the backs of those 20,000 ex-employees (most likely among other things). This is a personal opinion, and out of step with the libertarian position that it's a private company and can do what it wants. I'm am not a hypocrite: I just hold 2 differing opinions at the same time.  There was also a hedge fund involved here somewhere; it was over who was going to maintain the hedges outside the corporate offices.

• One of the reasons I like Firefox is the addons. My latest is Mouse Gesture Events. You'd be surprised (maybe you wouldn't) what you can do with just a mouse gesture.  Forward, backward, shut current page and go backward, all sorts of stuff. It's in the normal addons spot.
• Another is ColorfulTabs. The default Firefox has tabs that are all the same color. This auto-colors them so the one on top is easy to find. You can also make it use colors you prefer.
• If you're running Firefox under linux and want to use the Backspace key to go back a page, open about:config, search for browser.backspace_action, change the 2 to zero. Done. Test to make sure.

One newspaper asked if the 2020 elections could be postponed because of the virus.  No, the country would never get that lucky.

An article in the Guardian says that the virus is creating hell on OCD patients who are compulsive hand-washers. Part of the treatment is not washing their hands.  Up until recently, those antibacterial dispensers weren't for viruses: they were OCD tests.

• Everyone's favorite dictator and Wild and Crazy Guy, Vladimir Putin, signed a boatload of amendments to the Constitution (not specified whose), allowing him to run for Dictator once more. The amendment after that one had him winning the election.
• Not to be ignored, the Bernie Bros have stated that they'd rather hand Trump the presidency than vote for Biden. When the NY Post published this, they used the word 'exodus.' I thought they meant the socialists were leaving the country. Oh well.....

Everybody's favorite perv uncle, Joe Biden, forgot the year and wandered out of frame during a livestream. This man is presidential material. THIS is the Joe Biden we wanted to see while he was Vice President. It has been speculated that President Obama told the Secret Service to tie Uncle Joe to a chair for 8 years. Unless they find him with a 5 year old in a hotel, where pictures and video are already on the internet, this is the presumptive democratic nominee for president.

• Being stubborn, rigid may lower your risk of Alzheimer's.
• Hello... this is my wild card! Not only won't I get Alzheimer's, neither will my entire family. I have enough stubborn for the East Coast of the US.

EASTER

Happy Easter to those who celebrate (or care).
Although I'm not Catholic, I want you who are to enjoy whatever it is that you do.

In truth, I am part of a large, non-Catholic denomination that celebrates Easter. We are commonly known as the Holy C (candy). The malted balls are a favorite here, as well as the Reese's white chocolate candy.  As with any group, we had to split into 2: the people who dive right in, and the people who wait a day, til the candy goes on sale. Having been both, sometimes on the same day, I belong to the Sale Group. If I find myself at an Easter celebration and there's candy, I will switch over to the Dive Right In group for the day. I know, I know, religious hypocrisy. But let's face it: I'd have to want to leave the house and go to an Easter celebration for that to happen.

Since I'm not Catholic, my view of Easter is largely candy, complicated by reality. It's never fun when reality creeps into the picture. So I'm going to explain Easter to my fellow non-Catholic readers (so you'll only sound like a partial doofus at gatherings).  Warning: if you are an easily-offended Catholic, you want to stop reading right now. Solution: if you are easily-offended, you wouldn't be reading this blog, so....


Easter: Jesus comes out of his cave and looks around. If he goes back in, with a sad look on his face, we get another 6 weeks of gloomy weather (this happens regardless of Jesus where I live). If he goes jogging, it will be a good year for the crops (and thusly, Monsanto).  The final option, Jesus doing miracles, has been hoped for over 2,000 years. He will heal the sick (putting doctors and insurance companies out of work, so their lobbies got this option taken off the sheet). He will cure ailing cars (putting mechanics out of work, so they, too, got this removed from the list). Lastly, he will create peace the world over. This option proved the most difficult. This would force the Military Industrial Complex to starve, ruining entire economies, and giving millions nowhere to fight, causing worldwide starving. Jesus had no way of knowing that Peace = Starvation. Also put out were the politicians, who pretended to care about peace, and the one actually working for it. Lastly, President Trump was all set, in his third term, to create peace in the middle east, so he's Very Mad at Jesus. His only remaining satisfaction is that he's still richer than Jesus. They will go on to be great friends - the best of friends. Can I have a hand for Jesus? Jesus will be white-listed at all the presidents' golf clubs, resorts, and hotels (although I'd stay away from New York for a few years).

Stations of the Cross: this is where you guess how many gas stations will be open on Easter Sunday. This is a very complex religious game, because many stations have not set their hours yet. Exceptions: any gas station that produces its own food, like Fried Quickie Chicken. Any station run by a Sikh, and anything with an expiration date. The stations are north, south, east, and Bob.

Palm Sunday: This is where the devoted, the semi-devoted, and the people who are dragged into it by relatives, for some reason, beat each other about the head and shoulders with palms. At this point, they realized that this palm thing isn't all that bad, right?  This is also the time when the non-Catholics start to pay attention and think maybe these Catholics have a point. However, they want to modify Palm Sunday so the celebration is done at individual homes, sometimes with only 2 people, sometimes with up to 25.  Sssshhhhhhh  - the safe word is BUNNIES.

Ash Wednesday: People go to church, whereupon a person in a very silly white getup puts ashes on their forehead. The first time I saw this, I was aghast... how could people walk around with dirty foreheads for an entire day? My friends, bless them, took me aside and explained it to me. Then I became privately aghast. I have it on good authority that children sometimes celebrated this holiday in their own individual tradition: they smoked a cigarette, while writing their excuse notes for school, and put the ashes on their foreheads. This only worked once, because Catholic mothers know the difference between cigarette ashes and Proper ashes. Even modern science can't tell the difference, but MOM can. They just never asked her. Oddly enough, Jewish mothers can also tell, but nobody asked them either. The Jews think Jesus was ahead of his time: he worked at the first ever Car Wash. This gave him a lot of spare time to do miracles and stuff.

Jesus: I was really far out of the loop on Jesus, so it took quite a while to figure out this whole Father, Son, and Holy Ghost thing. You can't be 3 people.... unless.... Jesus with the first with multiple personalities! Just wait til the church starts fighting with psychology! The church will say there's no such thing as multiple personalities. Psychology will say there's no such thing as Jesus. It will be funny to watch for the first few hundred years; after that, it will get tedious.


Good Friday: The Catholics, overnight, in a quiet raid, borrowed a worldwide tradition. After an entire week of working, we celebrate by getting drunk, having sloppy sex, hugging telephone poles, eating things that don't go well with alcohol, and drinking alcohol that doesn't go well with other alcohol. Everybody looks forward to Friday. When the Catholics 'appropriated' it, they gave official standing to Friday Activities. The only thing they changed was during sloppy sex, you cannot use a condom, and you have to have sloppy sex strictly for having a baby.  Good Friday happens 52 times a year, but officially it only happens once. If you forget and use a condom in your drunken state, you must enter the Holy Closet and whip out a few bills for the poor and the PAL (Priests Alcohol Locker).  You are forgiven, and free to go out and do it again next Friday.


Super Saturday: This is a brand new (under 1,547 years) tradition that means nothing. Saturday just felt lonely, between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, thus was given its own holiday. We all have the person in the family who thinks he deserves his own holiday.... no one invites him to family parties, yet he shows up anyway.


Easter Sunday: on this day, most of the stores are closed. This is the way you can tell Catholics are serious about this holiday. Skipping ahead a few months, this is why the Jews eat Chinese food on their holidays. The Catholics have no choice but to eat at delicatessens, where they think corned beef is some dark shade of red, not brown, as Jesus decreed.


Easter Monday: when the candy sales start. Also typically when employers give their employees the day off, in celebration of Jesus the candy sales.

• According to a Vatican exorcist, one exorcism he presided over had the person levitate and stay on the ceiling for 6 hours.
• YOU - You get down off the ceiling and get exorcised, you demon from hell. This is precisely what my mother used to say to me.

Today I identify as   a missing COVID-19 test kit, going for $1950 on Ebay


Heroes of the Stupid

Utah may make it illegal for cops to masturbate in their cars.
Is there a need for this law? what about at home?



SJW Saltiness


Bulletin: It's racist to shut down travel from places that are heavily diseased.
It's racist to identify where the disease came from.


Furry hate is always just a cover for queerphobia
not when the #1 show in the nation features furries...


Tammy Bruce: Dem erasure of Tulsi Gabbard is the ultimate misogyny
Damn - I thought having a penis was the ultimate misogyny

Weaponized Bunnies?

THIS JUST IN

Early Pleistocene enamel proteome from Dmanisi resolves Stephanorhinus phylogeny

Don't say I didn't warn you...



Mozilla is supercharging Firefox with two new features: one is DNS over HTTP, which hides your DNS requests. This makes it more difficult to track you. Coming up is their VPN. This will protect Firefox traffic only. When you connect to a site through the vpn, your IP address will not appear. However, you'll still get cookies (if you allow them) and your 'fingerprint' will be the same. Still, it's best to use this whenever you can, especially at 'free wifi' spots. A (free) Firefox account is required. Firefox will also be blocking trackers by default.

You can also use TOR - free browsers are available in your app store.

DNS and VPN services are provided by Cloudflare. There is no mention of a vpn for mobiles. Cloudflare is huge and reputable, but they can be 'asked politely' for information by governments. 


Dealerleads.com left their entire database, 413gb of data, open on the internet. The data is potential car buyers' names, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses and more. This stuff is crazed and it's not going to stop anytime soon.

WhatsApp 'delete for everyone' doesn't delete media files sent to iDevice users.

iDevice lockscreen bypass: iOS13 tricked into showing your contacts.



I'm looking at my phone, checking on the wireless networks on the block.  It finds something called Bedroom TV. This should be fun. Last time it found an open printer. It took all I had not to print a few pages out for them.

• "Tyranny is always better organized than freedom." - Charles Peguy

Dear lefty

• You sound happy today
• I got some sex last night. I'm just not sure from whom.

It's 9:15am on a Saturday. It's gray outside and it might have stopped raining. Someone is running a weeder with an 8 cylinder 454 Corvette engine outside my window. Legal question: is it wrong to smoke near its gas tank?

• California passed a bill to ban police use of facial recognition. I'm stunned.
• But only on People of Color.  that's better.

Today I identify as another white guy exercising his privilege (but not his body)

About a year ago, six Stingray devices were found around Washington, DC. These devices fake being a cell tower site, so all phones in the area connect to it, and the owner has 100% of the information flowing through it.  Not that anything important happens in DC, you know, around the White House....

The FBI did some research and discovered they belonged to Israel. The FBI is pissed, calling the Israelis Copycat and Thiefy Thiefy, for stealing their toy. 

Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu said, "No intelligence work in the US, no spies."  Yeah, ok.  The Mossad is famous for its spying and have been doing it in the US for quite a while. They just got caught.

In a previous post, I talked about foreign aid. The largest recipient is Israel, at something like $8+ billion. Do you think this bolsters my argument that we should cut off all foreign aid?  Hell, it's our money....

Large Question: How is Israel so popular and well-defended in the US? Most presidents and all Congresses kowtow. Does Israel get pictures of them from Epstein?

No thank you, I'd rather file taxes.

It's only September, but here's an early winner for Tweet of the Year:

Instead of more debates, the Democrats should settle this the obvious way: whoever can go door to door and forcefully confiscate the most AR-15s in the next 6 months gets to be the nominee.  @liberty4masses

I haven't seen the local news in quite a while, so I sat down. I was stunned.
There was a huge story about a man whose dog shredded a box, put in the wrong spot because the postal worker was afraid of the dog. They interviewed the dog owner, who spent a long time pontificating about the postal service. They spoke to the postal service, who had a statement and apologized. THIS IS NEWS.

Then it was Major Coverage of the tv star who paid tens of thousands to have her less than intellectually gifted kid pass a test. Oh my God, she's being sentenced! Then there was some anti-police grafitti on a jogging path, featuring interviews with a neighbor and the police chief.

I live in a large metro area. There is never a shortage of news. Democratic debates just happened - that might qualify as news. Not here, apparently. No wonder I stopped watching news. This is the Taylor Swift song of news: vapid, containing nothing of value, but nice. With a good beat - we can dance to it. I give it a 3, Bob.




Heroes of the Stupid

The Ontario government lost $42m selling cannabis in the last year.

from TV news: We tried to reach out to the man who died in the accident, but he was unavailable for comment.

Florida couple accused having sex in the back of a police car following arrest.

Florida man smokes meth, snorts coke, takes Xanax, passes out, wakes up and masturbates in the hospital, police say.  He's a middle school science teacher, obviously in the midst of doing some Science.

Florida: Crossdresser robs bank, steals cop car. Did it fabulously




SJW Stuffiness

Pete Buttigieg is not gay. He's a heteronormalized man who has sex with other men. There's a difference.


NY City Commissioner: replace male statues in Central Park with women.


PC couple are keeping their toddler's gender a secret so the child can decide later.      The child's religion too?

I do nothing: I do it often and I do it well

For some reason, known only to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, an email address I don't use has become Spam Central, largely for foreigners trying to give me millions of dollars because of their declining health (and mental capabilities). The address is ONLY used for Google communications for this blog. Even though I was never good at math, I think I got this one.

If I really cared, I'd take them up on their offer and scam them out of their own money, but it's just sooooo much effort to expend when I can't become awake for work, even at my own desk, after 3 cups of coffee (and an undisclosed amount of meth, snorted right there, which everybody thinks is coke).

• If you use Firefox and take advantage of private browsing, you will be happy to know that it's absolutely infested with Google nonsense. I'm recommending that, if you care, you set your options to mimic private browsing, without using the feature (forget everything you did, flush cookies and history, etc). 
• One of the problems is the use of a Google blacklist of bad sites. When you query the list, Google knows where you're going. Outside of private browsing, you can set the service used (which may also keep records - check).

Speaking of delayed gratification, Stanford University for the Terminally Wealthy did a famous study, where children were put in a room and given a marshmallow. They were told they could eat it whenever they wanted, but if they waited til the Study Person returned, they'd get another marshmallow. Forty years later, it was shown that the children who waited experienced better outcomes in life. Also that phrases like 'better outcomes' take about forty years to appear. And if you don't pay researchers on time, studies take a lot longer to reach a conclusion.  [from 12 Habits of Mentally Strong People]

• US police might be in trouble via their bodycams. They turned up hackable, which could put the attacker in control of the camera and video. 
• If the police don't forget to turn the camera on.
• We will not learn.

After several huge media outlets threw Alex Jones off, coincidentally at the same time, it was discovered Twitter didn't. This came as quite a shock to Twitter's Left, which demanded he be silenced for 'hate speech', as well as free speech advocates, who figured he'd be thrown off by now. Reports are that Jones' subscriptions went through the roof after 'disappearing'. Twitter's Left are apoplectic, demanding they Do Something. Twitter is having trouble making a decision, for once. It should be noted that the majority of people thrown off Twitter are Twitter Right, as admitted by Jack, Twitter's Big Cheese<tm>.

Now, let's think on this for a second. As the election heats up, a conspiracy guy, off to the right, gets thrown off most major media/social sites at once. One could theorize he's influential, as so many sites acted at once. And since several sites acted at once, who's giving the orders?

Disclaimers: I do not listen to Jones, but he amuses me. As a libertarian, I believe that these sites have a right to allow or disallow whoever they want. However, this smells orchestrated and deserves investigating.

The effect of these actions is silencing people and cutting off income. Regardless of the person or entity being censored, is it ok with you that major outlets essentially dictate what you can see/hear/read?  Again, this is not about a person so much as silencing in general. Make no mistake - to allow this is a mistake. The left's excuse is 'hate speech'. If these people understood the First Amendment, they'd know that there is no such thing as hate speech. Speech is speech, whether or not you agree with it. This includes the unscrupulous legislators who allow such assaults on freedoms guaranteed to everyone.

• As if it wasn't bad enough that companies are selling literal airbrushes to apply makeup, they are also selling spray-on hair and/or root touchup. 
• dent puller would be helpful, as would body putty.

After watching way too many police shows, covering the US and UK, I've come to the conclusion, after taking way too much time, that police have turned into a multi-billion dollar drug-seeking operation. I think we can all agree that anything showing the officers in a bad light gets scrubbed from video and never shown. This leads to video of police actions that they think are legitimate.

The script is always the same:

• sometimes lame excuse for pulling someone over
• I need to pat you down
• do you mind if we search your vehicle? If you have nothing to hide, why object?
• ooh - drugs!

Some of the excuses are legitimate, like running a light. Some are completely ridiculous, like not using your turn signal for two seconds before changing lanes. Or a bulb out on your plate. I got pulled over for swerving a little as I approached a toll booth. I fully admit swerving, as I was reaching into my pocket for my wallet. We were on our way to a gig and the guy was playing "you don't have anything in the car I need to know about?". Officer, if you want to pull all our equipment out of the car and check it, be my guest. Then we invited him to the show, because we're that way, plus it was a lovely passive aggressive move on my part.

In all of these cases, the police were looking for drugs.

Now think about this. The US and UK (and whatever other countries) have set up a humongous infrastructure for the War on Drugs. The police are a detection unit for this alleged war. They don't even issue a ticket for a moving violation by itself without looking for drugs. Most of the time, they find drugs. One can guess these segments were left in on purpose because it makes great television, and the non-drug pullovers aren't shown because they're not exciting. Or most of the pullovers are for drugs. Take your pick.

The moral aspect of this is hysterical. "No, son, I don't smoke that stuff and you shouldn't either." Yeah, the forty year old policeman hasn't smoked a doobie and gives a stern moral lecture. Just say no to cutting off our money supply for this terrible war we must fight.

And then there are the just plain stupid drivers, who lead the police on a dangerous, high speed chase through two counties because they have an overdue parking ticket. The driver admits this to the cops, as he's being extracted from his upside down vehicle that he crashed on the side of the highway, after the stop sticks were deployed. No doubt they search what's left of the vehicle for drugs.

DISCLAIMER: none of the above applies if the driver is impaired. The police and prosecutors should throw the book at anyone who drives impaired for any reason.

• Ever so slightly disconcerting is watching my cursor move a little bit by itself.

The Continuing Adventures of Space Force

Lieutenant lefty here.

As you may remember, I was selected for The Force by President Trump himself. A year later, we still don't know why.

I have risen in rank rapidly, because of things like getting three r-words into small sentences, seemingly effortlessly. The fact that I can tell the difference between a male and female cable end might also have something to do with it.

Last week our Secret Mission (sssshhhhh.... don't tell anybody) was to check out what King Kong Ill, President for Life of North Korea, was up to when not in the press. What I'm going to tell you is Triple Top Secret, above even Double Tomato Clearance, so you must swear on whatever it is that people swear on, that you will not repeat this information or tell anyone where you read it. When not in the public eye, King Kong Ill has his BFF, Dennis Rod Man, over for one of his Ultra Secret crossdressing parties. The Minister of Panty Propaganda had a little chat with Rod Man, wherein he explained that no matter how Dennis dressed, the most fabulous and prettiest in the party had to always be the Ill, as insiders call him. An outsider called him the Ill once, and they still haven't found his body.

When President Trump met King Kong, he couldn't understand why the Ill had a picture of J. Edgar Hoover, nefarious head of the FBI and famous gay crossdresser, in his private suite. There are still high level discussions among the Cabinet whether it was a full size picture or just another of the Ill's mirrors.

After this amazing discovery, we saw a bunch of various colored and shaped craft of some sort whiz by our ship. Since we're the Space Force, we thought maybe we should take some sort of action. Since we're the Space Force, we had no idea what action to take, so we phoned the White House. Dick Cheney said we saw nothing; it was merely space gas. So we went back to our duties. By the way, if anybody knows what our duties are, could you please send them to me at my secret classified email address?  Thank you.

How Do You Stop... the Grass from Growing?

Video Me Video You Blues

Research (that I didn't make up) shows additional productivity when a second monitor is added. So I use at least two. For a little while, the monitor cable has been going. You have to wiggle it to get all the colors.  Not being able to suffer it any longer, I got another one from The Pile. Don't ask about The Pile or my wife will tell you.

There are few things I truly despise in life. One is the 'ribbon' in more recent versions of Microsoft Office. It's foul, evil, and serves no useful purpose. It just sits there, taking up valuable screen real estate. After I hide it, I get a little less agitated. The other things I hate is DB9 connectors, otherwise known as VGA or   monitor cables. The end of these things was designed by a very clever sadist. The two screwy things that secure the cable to the computer are guaranteed to catch on anything in the vicinity, like power cables, audio cables, network cables, dog leashes, and internal or external organs. Today I was unpleasantly surprised by the connector getting stuck on my hair. WHY?

After having extricated 26 things from the cable end, I got the little bastard situated, but the last laugh was on the cable: the screen was missing red.

The other thing I would like to eradicate from the universe, and I probably haven't mentioned it before, is Microsoft Windows. I haven't said anything bad about Windows in a few hours... I must be slipping. My Windows virtual machine is set to NOT install any updates. As I was closing it yesterday, it had four updates to install. Even in public schools, but maybe not colleges, four is greater than zero. So Windows overrode the user's settings and installed updates anyway. Why do I hate Windows? This is just one of the many reasons.  There are many instances when you don't want to install updates. Microsoft has deliberately overriden the users preferences. I will not use an operating system that makes its own decisions and knows better than me. Windows: it's not an operating system - it's a virus.




It's not like I don't listen to new 'music' because I don't like it. I don't listen to new music because it sucks. Sometimes it shows up on tv in commercials, a particularly egregious example being "yeah, we're all about a good time, yeah, we're all about a good day" over clapping, in an annoying monotone, by what sounds like a black female. It offended my ears. Along with the aforementioned "You got me like ah, and ooh, with all the things you do."

• Faceyspaces will allow users to delete their history on the service. This is good and a nod toward privacy after they got caught doing what they do normally. Of course there's a hitch: everything you're deleting has been used to profile and sell your data already.

Firefox wants you to know that they're not ads - they're sponsored content. With Firefox 60, you'll see ads. Mozilla says there's no personal information sent, just HTTPS pings when you do something on the about:home and about:newtab pages. Every 30 days, the data will be aggregated and permanently deleted. Mozilla claims they don't share data with any third party. You will be able to opt out.

If the opt out uses cookies, you're screwed because you delete your cookies at the end of the session or on a timed basis or when you close the browser, right? As we tin foil people say, trust nothing and no one.  I'll try opting out. If that fails, there will be another way to stop this behavior, perhaps via about:config. The whole nonsense is run by Pocket, which Mozilla bought. Perhaps disabling Pocket will fix things. You'll hear about it right after I do. The other option is to use a different browser, but I really like Firefox, plus the Chrome-based browsers phone home to Google.

• Volkswagen and Audi car infotainment systems have been hacked remotely by Dutch security researchers, in two 2015 models, the Volkswagen Golf GTE and an Audi A3 Sportback e-tron, both made by Volkswagen Audi Group (VAG).  The hack does not impact any critical systems, although what you say could be remotely monitored. The critical systems are a firewall away from the infotainment system, so it's only a matter of time.
• In good news, the researchers were invited to VW HQ to go over the hack, which will result in stronger systems. The bad news is that every car will have to go back to the dealer for updated firmware.

The wife took the dog to visit some people in faraway lands. I really miss at least one of them. As I still haven't received the all clear for a Vice Wife (who steps in when Wife cannot perform the duties of her office), I have gone to a different system. Now I ask for a babysitter to watch me, in case I get up to things while bored. I get into a lot of trouble normally - it's worse when left alone. Since I wanted to build trust in the process, I suggested our favorite pizza place's headmistress, a particularly fetching lady. Wife knows her and approves, except for the babysitting part.  I need to work harder on a solution.

• "I found bladder leak underwear that's actually pretty" said the commercial.
• What the commercial didn't say was that if I put them on without a bladder leak problem, will I still feel pretty? Sometimes a man likes to feel pretty.

Well, it's almost that time of year again: grass season.

You know what that means... I have to find places to hide every time Wife says anything to do with 'mow'. I decided to work smarter this year, as I haven't perfected that invisibility thing yet. And even if I did, I'd still knock things over and make rude noises, giving myself away.

Last year was the happiest year of my life, grasswise. We hired the kid from across the street. He missed spots and needed a lot of direction, but he got me out of mowing. Wife says she doesn't know if she wants to hire him again this year.

WHAT?

This kid is the greatest thing to happen to me.... err... grass since it was invented. Schools teach that grass was discovered, not invented. This came as a hell of a surprise to Bill Crabgrass, noted inventor of trash bags, falling leaves and yes, grass. 

I asked, meekly, she had in mind. David Crosby just put out two albums, Tom Petty stubbornly remains dead, and Cindy Lauper, shockingly, is on tour with Rod Stewart (show starts at 8, recommend you get there at 9). She hasn't gotten back to me yet, so that's been keeping me up at night.

I suggested she give the young man another chance... after all, she'd want one. In the spirit of fairness and neighborliness, it appears that I'm safe for another season.

Oops. Except for that Satan Weed. It wasn't invented, it was discovered, right after clouds and tornadoes. It's a clump of dark green grass that pops up out of nowhere, growing to a foot and a half overnight, even though Mr. Crabgrass' invention has not yet started to grow. Since we have yet to sign a deal with the neighbor, the job looks likely to fall to me. I'm going to need a lot of excuses as to why I cannot possibly complete this allegedly necessary task (feel free to contribute):

• back hurts
• can't remember how to install the battery (it drops in)
• forgot to charge the battery
• need to change the tires from winter air to spring air
• mower no good on Satan Weed
• someone got their penis stuck in the vacuum. Again. (well, the thing attacks)

I wonder if, for a signing bonus, I can get him to take out the trash.

• It's handy to know a few words in every language, preferably dirty phrases and curses. Yesterday I expanded my vocabulary:
• Vez al pista - have you seen the runway? - in Brazil/Portuguese. If this won't get me chicks, I don't know what will.
• So I get with my Subject Matter Expert (SME) in Portuguese, who can't even translate it. She suggests this is not the way to go about meeting women. Fair enough, how about a few curses or body parts? My SME is not impressed and refuses to give me any interesting words or phrases, except the more hopeful "Kiss me, I'm stupid."
• I may have to get a new SME.

Cambridge Analytica, the company that got caught up in the Faceyspaces fracas for siphoning off personal information, is going out of business.  In completely unrelated news, the founders have registered a new data analytics company called Emerdata.

ThermionicEmissions' cynical bent tells us that Emerdata will operate extremely similarly to Cambridge Analytica.

• OOPS - Australia's Commonwealth Bank lost records for 12 million people (almost half the population) when two magnetic tapes were misplaced by a subcontractor. Per Australia's Privacy Commissioner, "a decision was made not to alert customers." Now there's some serious privacy for you.
• One of the possible scenarios was that the tapes fell off the back of a truck when they were being transported to be destroyed. 
• Cut it out. In what universe does a truck carrying tapes keep the back door open so things can fall out? You will notice that no armored trucks carrying cash keep their back doors open so money can fall out.

Because we haven't done enough damage to the language, we have a new word: micro-volunteering. Since we're not sure what it's about, let's do what we always do... take the ball and run with it. No matter if we're running the wrong way - I did it all the way through my childhood.

I'll micro-volunteering to help the neighbor take out the trash. She'll take it out, but I'll think about it for her, donating my time.

Perhaps I can micro-volunteer to help at-risk youth. I'll give them the url of this blog and they'll never be the same. Perhaps help is too strong a word....

In a little while, I'm micro-volunteering to walk the dog.
"Honey - the dog needs to go out."

• This seems to be a weird week. Moreso. Dad calls Wife: We were so worried. You called the other day at 6am. We called you right back and no one answered. We tried for days.
• News to us.
• Wife checks the phone log. Yes, there were two outgoing calls at 6am to parents. The only problem is that no one made them. Yes, there's one call from Dad, but no others from 'all week'. 
• The phone made two calls by itself.
• This is Regular Weird. Delightfully Weird was last time, when my phone called Dad, Dad's phone called Brother, and Brother's phone called me. There were NO calls in any of the phone logs.
• Just in case you think I'm done... my parents rush to answer the phone in the bedroom. It rings a lot. The only problem is they don't have a phone in the bedroom.

The Hacking Demons are at it again.
There's a Windows 10 issue, as if there wouldn't be. Bear with me, as I don't use Windows 10. The problem seems to start if the user uses a browser based upon Chrome. It displays a time-out issue and the entire screen turns black. The long and short of it is that you're screwed at this point because no one has figured a workaround. The article I read did not specify anything but my guess is that you shouldn't be using Chrome or any other browser based upon it. On the linux side, Opera, Chromium, Iron, and Vivaldi are based upon Chrome, and I believe all are available on Windows. If you're not already using it, try Firefox. Technically this isn't a hacker issue, but let's put it there.

If you're an Under Armour user, meaning if you use MyFitnessPal, you're one of 150 million affected in the data breach. 


Got an iPhone? The latest update has a bit of a bug. Since iDevices don't have bugs, this is an Undocumented Feature. Apple has decided that it is more important to listen to a caller than speak. The feature mutes the microphone during phone calls.  You can decided if this feature works for you, but remember, Apple leads, and the rest of the world follows (per an actual Apple employee who came to work to preach to us).

My computer hurts.

Actually my morale hurts.

If it were my computer, the problem would already be solved. This is the work computer, which is locked down so well I can't even put naked ladies on the background. I hate to say it, but this is a really great thing. It keeps people from destroying their PCs and doing all kinds of damage to the network. And from naked ladies, but one must take the negative with the positive.

I did everything that had to do with computers and networks at one point. I remember what it was like to be a desktop computer fixer or a helpdesk. We did our jobs well and efficiently, so we could get to the next issue. However, this was not the perception of the users. Because we were not standing at their desks the moment there was an issue, before they even had to notify us, we were fat, lazy, incompetent, and spent all day playing solitaire or looking at naked ladies (recurring theme, I know).

One day at the cube farm, I was under someone's desk, fixing something (no, the view was nowhere near as spectacular as one would think). Someone suggested to someone else that they call IT for their problem. She immediately blurts out how Stupid IT never does anything right and never bothers to show up. It suddenly gets very quiet in this area. I leap out from under the desk, pop up at the complainer's desk, and ask what Stupid IT can do for her today. There was laughter and a really red face.

The moment I got out of helpdesk, I made it a rule to never be like that: a surly, entitled user, who expects repair yesterday, plus your lunch. This has not served me well at my latest employer. Let's call the atmosphere City Worker, where you're lucky to have a phone to call Helpdesk, and if they answer, it's a minor miracle. If they make out a ticket, the sun will shine for a week straight. If they actually route the ticket and address the problem, the lottery ticket you just found will be worth $4.5 million.

Two weeks ago I lost three days waiting for Helpdesk to fix an issue. Three days of work. I tracked my Helpdesk ticket, which spent some time in Purgatory, then migrated to the San Francisco office. No one knows why, so I called the San Francisco office to speak to the new owner of my ticket. He wasn't in, but I got his handy voicemail, on which I left a polite request to call me. I figured I'd hear from him, as I said the ticket didn't even belong to him. Nope.

Finally I gave up and called a Helpdesk person directly, who fixed the issue in fifteen minutes. My ticket was still in San Francisco and had not been touched. If I waited for someone to grab the ticket, I'd be at three weeks as of now. Who knows - three weeks might improve their overall stats. Perhaps they grade personnel not on closed tickets, but on how long they keep the client waiting.

Not to be outdone, I logged on this morning to find I couldn't get my email. On planets where gravity is universal and works the same everywhere, if you can log onto the network, you can read your email. As we apparently have some sort of gravitic anomaly, I can't. Meanwhile my coworkers are having trouble getting into random apps. I called Helpdesk. Apparently wait times are so bad that it offered to call me back when it was my turn. Yay! So I kept my phone close. After a few hours, I even took it to the bathroom and kitchen with me. If I were a betting man, I'd bet that I could read a book called How to Pick Up Chicks, get some experience doing it, pick up a coworker, go to the parking lot and have sex in her car, then go back to my desk, the phone never having rung. City Workers are jealous. The federal government wants to know how we do it. We're a model of modern corporate inefficiency.

DAY TWO

It is Day Two, as indicated on the previous line.
The system that was supposed to call me back didn't.
[sigh]
So I called back and got a tech immediately.
[it's mind blowing and byzantine]

For the next 90 minutes, we did everything possible to fix the issue. The first thing we noticed was that a reboot fixed one of the problems. This is positively insane, as I booted up a few minutes prior to the call. WINDOWS.

No fix applied got me email. We gave up and I got an override, allowing me access to email. Some 'experts' will review the problem and fix it. Strangely and coincidentally, I noticed an update running by itself. The same kind of update that caused the problem weeks ago.  No one will review this or implement any larger fix.


DAY THREE
You didn't think I was getting off that easy, did you?
Could not get into the system at all. Again.
Called two support people, one of whom put in another override, which worked. I was then free to get screwed by a new piece of software the boss bought.

Helmsman, I'll expect that mood lifted by 1300 hours, understood?
Can not, Sir. Morale's taken two torpedoes in the aft flingenbottom, Sir.

Usually horrible morale is caused by a grossly incompetent boss. In this case, it's simply getting to where you need to go to do your work. And if I spend the rest of the week without email or not doing my job, no one will care. The Department of Motor Vehicles has sent over their two top operations guys to figure out how we get nothing done with such grace and style.

an honest politician?

Oh Atlanta

The city of Atlanta got hit with ransomware a few days back. FBI, Microsoft, and Cisco are investigating. Mayor Keisha Bottoms (good God, no!) announced that the breach had been ransomware.  There is no word on whether the ransom will be paid, as Mayor Bottoms (I'm going to keep typing this name for months) did not elaborate. As we all remember, if you keep good backups, you should be ok. And don't click on anything. Anything. Just don't.

• It is with great surprise that I congratulate my area's snow removal personnel. Before the very large storm was over, the streets were clear. Including mine, which tends to be toward the back of the line. With a day or two of sun, there was precious little to shovel. Remember: shoveling is the major cause of heart attacks. Don't shovel.

Many many people marched over the weekend to protest the recent shootings. Or rather, they marched for gun control. Thousands and thousands of people marched against their own rights. 

Now, the disclaimers: 

* the marchers have every right to march - it's their First Amendment right, which I support wholeheartedly. 

* what happened in Parkland (and every other location) was unconscionable. Beyond tragedy. My heart goes out to those left behind. There was no reason for any of it.

* is there really any surprise that the shooter had issues, after the police were called to the house approximately 30 times?

* the sheriff and other law enforcement people failed to enter the school while the shooting was in progress. Police response time was 20 minutes.

* had the school taught the kids about the Constitution, perhaps they'd think twice about leaving class to protest it. But we don't seem to have any investment in teaching our children anything useful. I continue to not use algebra.

* one of the marchers in New York was Sir Paul McCartney. I don't know what Sir Paul's country of residence is, but I am getting tired of being lectured by people outside the country, who do not understand our laws and Constitution. It's bad enough our own people don't understand. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only musician who isn't a liberal (or conservative).

* I don't want to lose one life, under any circumstances; child or adult. I truly wish I had a solution. Gutting the Second Amendment is not the answer.

* No word on the senseless tragedy from Atlanta's mayor, Keisha Bottoms (told you so).

In the past day, I discovered that permits were applied for two months in advance of the parade.

• My friends at the Wall Street Journal (I lied - they don't return my calls) tell us that a Vanderbilt University researcher claims that hospital data breaches lead to patient deaths. 2100 patient deaths each year, according to the study. After a breach, quality of care goes down for some reason. This is a great article to read first thing. I love the smell of doom in the morning. 

The other day at the airport, beepers started going off. They were plentiful, and they were shrill.  Lots of serious-looking men in uniform, with guns, started arriving and waving these odd wallet-size devices around. They would emit their own screeching, varying in pitch. Eventually they located a woman and turned their beepers off. There are radiation sensors all over the place and the devices were portable detectors.  What triggered them? A woman who had a medical procedure involving low level radiation, five days prior.  I read about this happening at a border crossing a few years back, again from a prior medical procedure. Well, it's a good thing people aren't carrying dirty nukes through the airport, I guess. You can decide if your tax dollars are well-spent.

• The encryption mechanism in Firefox and Thunderbird's "Master Password" feature was found vulnerable.  If you use either, they will be upgraded. In the "I told you so" department, do not store passwords in your browser, please. Use a password manager.

The Coworker Chats

Monday morning...

ME: I've got training today from 1-2 and tomorrow from 3-4.

Tuesday morning...

HIM: I'm a little confused. Do you have training today?

ME: Yes, 3-4.

HIM: ok, thank you. I got my handbook today. Did you?

ME: I didn't order the print version.

HIM: So you received the download?

ME: no.

HIM: you don't need the handbook?

ME: I haven't received it.

HIM:  but we all got an email from them, asking us which we wanted.

ME: Please do not talk to me in the morning. Or afternoon.

-----------------------------------------------------------

ME: that training on helpdesk I took was a mess
HIM: the service desk or ???

ME: one of us needs to take a remedial English class. Guess which? The other one of us needs to start drinking,.

My old boss suggested pills, "because drinking takes too long to get good at".

------------------------------------------------------------

Speaking of old bosses, yesterday I flashed back to an old job. I was driving into work, when I got a call from my boss, who had gone missing for a week or two. He wanted me to be impressed because he admitted that he was an addict.

I pride myself on not overreacting to bizarre and sometimes tragic information, so I was able to drive while listening. I humored him (that's great, man, going away for 28 days?). He subsequently disappeared for another week, called to say hello, then disappeared completely.

Since that was the morning for phone calls, I got another, from a coworker. He got pulled over by the police, who found rather serious drugs, for some reason, and he was 'going away' for a bit.

So, aside from losing a substantial portion of our department, it was a pretty good day.

Epilogue:
I ran for boss. Coworker said he'd pray for me (he was serious). I became boss. Did good work. Drug Person went away for a while (we threw him a going away party). A year or two later, we were horrified to learn Boss died. Now I work for a place where gravity is more than a suggestion.

• The Federal Trade Commission announced it is launching an investigation into Faceyspaces' data privacy practices. Where have these people been for the last ten years?
• Rob Sherman is the deputy chief privacy officer at Faceyspaces, who said “We remain strongly committed to protecting people’s information. We appreciate the opportunity to answer questions the FTC may have.”
• In other news, Faceyspaces has a deputy chief privacy officer.  I hear the NSA has a deputy chief privacy officer too. Can you imagine that job? The main task is checking to see that your salary was electronically deposited on time. Perhaps the two of them play golf. Tiddlywinks? A second career in porn?
• Zuckerberg's take on your lack of privacy? You signed up for it.
• Atlanta mayor Keisha Bottoms has not announced whether she will appoint a chief privacy officer for Atlanta. Judging by the ransomware attack, the answer is no (I could go all day with this).

Dan Schneider and Nickelodon have parted ways.
Opted to end their longtime partnership.
Agreed to not extend the current deal.
Pursue other opportunities and projects.

Dan is responsible for The Amanda Show, What I Like About You, Drake & Josh, Zoey 101, iCarly, Victorious, Sam & Cat and more.

What this mealy-mouthed, extended litany of bull excrement translates to is: Hey Dan... the poop is hitting the whirling device's blades. The stories of your pedophilia are coming fast and furious. We cannot call you a pedophile, at least according to our legal department, so we'll agree to voluntarily separate.

Hollywood is a cesspool, although not the only industry we will hear from on this topic.

After thinking about this for a while, I finally remembered where I saw him.... he's Ricky from Better off Dead!

Dan Schneider

Ricky - Better off Dead

RIP David Ogden Steirs - Better off Dead (and M*A*S*H)

If you have not seen Better off Dead, stop what you're doing and find a copy. Rent or buy, if necessary. The movie stars a very young John Cusack, as the kind of guy that life likes to take a dump on every now and then. I cannot accurately describe it but it's hilarious and suitable for all ages (I think). If you have seen it, isn't it time to watch it again?

• This fella found out what kind of information Faceyspaces had on him...
• If you have finally decided to extract Zuckerberg's nose from your life, here are a bunch of URLs to add to your HOSTS file, along with its location.

Just the facts: Bishop Amvrosios (real name Athanassios Lenis, of course) is about to be retried. He labelled gay people the "dregs of society".  What kind of people are they hiring over there? Should Catholics be happy that he's not a pedophile (not yet accused)? Maybe he's just mad about the gay orgy held near the Vatican, with male escorts and all the trimmings. Yeah, that's it.

• Everybody loses stuff; we're just particularly good at it. Last week, somebody lost dinner. Ok, leftovers in a container, but still... 
• Somebody once said that we keep our landlines for the purpose of calling our cell phones to see where they are. 
• Yesterday, someone lost a case of dog food. Dog food. Can you imagine the talent involved in losing an entire case of dog food?
• Right before a job interview, I heard the famous phrase, "How does someone lose an entire suit?

Best Headline

Was Arianna Huffington involved in sex cult depicted in NETFLIX series?

• Not all news out of San Francisco is bad or involves Nanci Pelosi. An Uber car got stuck after accidentally driving down stairs. The driver was a senior citizen. He said he doesn't normally encounter this problem when driving off tall buildings.
• You know what's next, right? Uber car plows through convenience store. Senior citizen driver says, "I went to step on the brake and hit the gas instead."
• Mr Uber President? United Airlines is on line 2. They want to know if you want the name of their public relations firm.

A man near Seattle was arrested, suspected of sending suspicious packages to multiple military facilities in DC.  Police say his motive was not immediately clear, but [you know what's coming - sing along with lefty] there was no immediate connection to terrorism. And before you ask, I was nowhere near Seattle recently.

In unrelated news, a (non-elderly) man drove his car into the FBI building. In the moments after the crash, as they were hauling Muhammed bin Boom from his car, the FBI guys said that the crash had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism.

Today in Legal News

• New York, which has thus far saved its citizens from the scourge of drinking too much soda, as well as from people who are smoking while walking, has proposed making it illegal for employees to access work-related email outside their regular work schedules.
• Usually one must live in California to find this kind of outrageous silliness.

Something happens on the Supreme Court. Maybe it's the food. Maybe it's the atmosphere. Maybe stupid multiplies in proximity to other stupid, but in the interests of the country, someone had better find out.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been pictured falling asleep. She also said she would leave the country if Donald Trump got elected. And now former Justice John Paul Stevens says the recent demonstrators should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment. 

I am not a legal scholar - far from it. I am hoping that Stevens is, but it's dubious. The Second Amendment was to protect ourselves from tyranny, locally and governmentally, yet he sees no more use for it.  Somebody's been drinking the Kool Aid, Justice Stevens. You should be ashamed.

It was inevitable, but this is pretty quick

• In the news, yet another attractive high school teacher is up on charges, this time for performing repeated acts of oral sex upon an early teen boy. She will go to jail. The boy will get a wing of the school named after him, as well as straight A's and more pats on the back than all of the sports teams combined.
• Today brings us the news that more nursing assistants have been arrested for sex with patients. This is the second bunch to be charged, out of an Iowa care facility. 
• I don't know what you think, but before they are sentenced, can we have a study on this particular healing modality? At very least, sex releases endorphins, which are the body's own painkillers. That alone should qualify as therapy, so long as they don't try to bill it to the insurance company. What is more uplifting than sex with a 20-something nursing assistant? Except sex with the 44 year old assistant, who knows a few tricks the 20-somethings don't.
• The women were charged with sexual exploitation by counselor, therapist, or school employee.  Let's have a non-legal, non-medical, non-expert discussion of these charges. Sexual exploitation... let's ask the patients if they felt exploited. It's not like they were forced (unless they asked to be forced). The CNAs are not counselors, therapists, or school employees - there is no doubt or wiggle room there. Marshall the cocker could verify this.
• Stop for a moment. Think about baseball. Now, let's ponder sex with patients... I fully expect Weird Stuff to happen in any industry. We'd hear about it from time to time. But this particular Weird Stuff has happened at one facility. Do they do STD testing of employees? Do they hire from the horny pool? Is there something about new employee orientation that sets them upon the patients? What kind of weirdness would cause this to happen at one site? Something in the water? Depression caused by living in Iowa?
• If you, faithful readers, and I got together, we could solve many of the world's pressing problems. Meanwhile, I'm feeling ill. Perhaps a stay in Iowa would do me good.

Continuing the legal beat, a woman in Ohio was arrested for making lewd comments to the Easter bunny, while having her picture taken with it/him/her. Technically she was arrested for drunkenness, because, as we all know, it's not illegal to make lewd comments to the Easter bunny (unless you're in England and hurt Bunny's feelings).

• In-N-Out Burger in California (you think we'd get this far without a California story?) is filing suit against a prankster pretending to be their CEO. The prankster is a YouTube video-maker, and the chain wants damages of more than $25,000. Because pranksters on YouTube make that kinda money.
• In other news, employees of In-N-Out Burger in California have voted to keep a prankster claiming to be their CEO, as their CEO. An employee in their Van Nuys store said, on the condition of anonymity, "He's much nicer than the real CEO, so we're going with him."
• "This kind of thing would never happen here," said Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms.

Seriously, people, you need to get control of these drones. I'm not kidding when I say lives are at stake. Down There in New Zealand, a drone came so close to a plane that the crew worried it would get sucked into an engine. Although planes are designed to operate on one less engine, you don't want to test the theory, right? The Boeing 777-200 was coming in for landing. 

In related news, New Zealand has planes? 777-200s?

Philly has planes too. And three-deep parking in the No Parking zone.

South Philly has double and triple parking in front of row homes. If you tell someone they cannot do that, they get up from their pasta and meatballs, come out their front door, and put a .45 right between your eyes.

• The dog just barked at a trash truck. Not that I mind him defending us from trash trucks, but this is Dog Behavior. It always freaks me out when he does something normal dogs do. I'd expect that he'd be guarding his mommy, in bed, at this hour of the morning.

Back to the Parkland shooting for a moment... there was a drill on that day.
Just like 9-11 and countless others. Note to everyone: if there's a drill scheduled for anything, take the day off sane. Or sick.

• I don't care how old you are; going from Bangkok to Phuket is funny.

Way back around 2000, I found an interesting online group, spending a lot of time chatting with them. I noticed some kind of common knowledge of an event, not related to the topic of the group. Finally I asked why it was a good idea not to be in New York around that time. And would I be in the path of whatever happened.... they indicated that I'd probably be ok but didn't know much more, other than a large, dangerous event.

Years later I recalled this and realized they were talking about 9-11-2001.

People and organizations are studying all sorts of odd things. At different places across the world, there are electronic coin-flippers, all connected to the internet. As we know, the odds of odd/even coming out on a coin toss is 50-50, more or less. The online flippers bear this out. Approximately a day before 9-11, they went widely out of pattern. Some people report dreams of burning buildings. Just information for you - do with it what you want.

It's of No Benefits To All

I changed employers recently. It was a pretty good move... all of the sudden I'm an actually wanted employee, with actual Benefits And Stuff. No more Obamacare!

Yesterday was time to fill in all the electronic paperwork relating to Benefits And Stuff. I enjoy electronic paperwork, largely because if there's paper paperwork, it will force me to write stuff. Since I've been using computers for umpteen years, I haven't been writing much. My handwriting, never really legible for the most part, has gone completely to hell. Moreso. So online works better for me. That is, until I try it.

It was a dark and stormy day. It's usually a dark and stormy day, and you can take it for granted that any day I post a blog entry, it's a dark and stormy day. In fact, when you think of Philthydelphia, your first thought should be 'dark and stormy day.'  This more than adequately sets the tone for any story.

There is nothing quite like the joy that is logging into some random site to purchase something or worse, to perform some job function. The level of stress and agitation approaches knife fighting. My wife and I have had three-day arguments that were much more calm than logging into certain sites. Usually the first issue is that I'm using linux. I am not sure why this is an issue because a browser is a browser, regardless of operating system. Some sites require Internet Explorer, which is heinous in the first place. Even Windows users shouldn't be messing with Internet Explorer. In the early days, Clever Folks found a clever way to run Internet Explorer under linux, but not lately. Speculation runs to these Clever Folks killing themselves in the most frightening and painful ways possible.

Fortunately, Internet Exploder is not a requirement for this site. How do I know this?  Because I could not log into the site, regardless of browser or operating system. When I called the site's 800 number, I was told that I had locked myself out, a handy security feature to keep everyone, including me, out of my account. Mind you, I had locked myself out by trying to log in with the credentials they provided. This is what the very nice customer service lady told me. I asked her if it wouldn't have been nice to indicate that I was locked out, but she said no, it was a safety feature. Well, it certainly kept my account safe from me accessing it. She told me that Internet Explorer didn't behave correctly in certain spots so they recommended something else, like Firefox. Firefox is my favorite browser, so this was good. In fact, Firefox works on most operating systems, including Windows, linux, and android. Not sure about iDevices.

Once logged in, I proceeded to the benefits section. Or rather I tried to proceed to the benefits section. The site told me there was an authentication error. Since I keep Firefox pretty locked down, I tried a different browser. Still the error. At this point, in spite of the dark and stormy day, the neighbor across the street decided to do some minor construction. This inevitably involves cutting things with a Very Loud Electric Saw.  In fact, I don't believe they construct anything; they just like sawing things outside.

I tried four more browsers, including one so wide open it's probably a red flag that says HACK ME. Nothing. No authentication. Cursing the existence of Windows, I fired it up in a virtual machine.

The dog, realizing this is a Very Important Activity, tests us by interrupting in his own delightful way... he walks up to me, puts his snout on my knee, and whines pitifully. If I stop petting him, he turns around, comes back again, and continues the whining. This will go on until I get up. (Foolishly) assuming he needs to go outside, I proceed to the door. Almost as if he's laughing at me, he positions himself next to his food bowl. He's having fun, trying to interrupt and annoy me, seeing if I'll get up and feed him. This normally starts an hour or so after he gets fed.

Using the evil Internet Explorer, I log into the site, only to discover that the same error occurs here.

This seemed as good a time as any for my wife to suspect that the noise she hears is mice. She stands absolutely still, waiting for the noise to occur again. Leaning against something turns out to be not as good an idea as first thought - while quietly waiting, she falls over on top of a pile of something or other. My wife is gifted with the grace of a pregnant hippopotamus (that's ok, she has her charms. I'll let you know what they are when I discover them). This fact is documented in her medical charts and is referred to as Positive Tilt. One day at the doctor, he wanted to test her balance and told her to close her eyes and put her arms out. This happened very quickly so I didn't have the chance to tell him this wasn't a very good idea. I made it out of my seat just in time to catch her as she went over. This seems like a very dangerous test and should only be performed in a hospital setting, where she can stand on a hospital bed so she'll be in great shape when she falls down.

Continuing with mice, this activity is not passive. It requires constant vigilance, in case there is more Mouse Noise. HINT: this will become a recurring theme.

Screaming, clenching my fists, and throttling my accelerating urge to throttle someone or something, I know it's time to call the nice people in Support. Again. This nice lady (they all seem uncommonly nice for some reason), without much interaction from me, proceeds to ask me if I'm getting precisely the same error I'm getting. AHA - a known error!  The nice lady tells me yes, this is known to happen sometimes. So why, I wonder out loud, don't they make some sort of notation that this happens? She does not know, but guides me to an alternate way to get where I want to be. This is also not noted, making the site what web designers call user friendly but I call User Hostile.

So I go forth, again, to sign up for benefits. First up is health insurance. This is very important to me, as it's generally expensive and generally required. We're essentially betting a huge corporation that we won't get sick.  I am presented with a choice of ten insurance options, all of which start with Aetna. I've heard horror stories about Aetna, but I've had good luck in the past. Fortunately in the User Hostile mess is an option to compare plans. This is even more fortunate, given the plans all have coded names, completely impossible to understand by normal humans, no less insurance industry types. AETNA QPS1000 was one, followed by AETNA HMO25.7 - are you seeing where this is heading yet?

I pull up a comparison of four insurances, selected because I like some of the numbers in the title, and start trying to figure out the benefits. I was assisted in this by a screen that told them what was important to me. I unchecked random selections like hysterectomy, birth control pills, and mammogram (because I have external plumbing, as you guessed). Trying to figure out the chart was an interesting exercise, even when I put it on a 26" monitor so we could both see. I went to ask Wife a question when I discovered she wasn't there. She was, however, on Mouse Patrol again. This forced me to ask questions loudly, hoping she'd recognize it was a question, as opposed to me just randomly screaming at something. Mostly she failed. After asking a time or four, I got her attention and her answer was "I don't know." I got through most of the comparison on my own because Mouse Patrol seemed to include stopping at random places and cleaning. Cleaning is wonderful, but not when I need somebody sitting next to me, providing a second brain.

The tv was on, which was a shame as nobody was watching it. As I got to a particularly frustrating question on the form, her phone rang. That was about IT for me and I let loose with a tirade that still scares the dog and the neighbors, after many years in the same house. The ringtone, which is the intro from Aerosmith's Back in the Saddle, thunders out of the phone at a volume that scares the shit out of me and causes the phone to walk itself right off the table. The phone is never with my wife when it goes off; it's always near me, as if to provide comic relief to the universe. She looks at me angrily and demands to know why I'm shouting. Well, it's not like I don't complain about the phone every time it shakes the house. Plus I have attention deficit disorder, which makes too much input VERY frustrating (tv, mouse hunting, power saw, phone ringing, and the internal children watching the tv with their mouth instead of their eyes).

The dog, through repeated experiments, has learned that the "Get Daddy off the couch to feed him more" routine only works two or three times.

Four hours later, with the occasional help of my wife, I have selected health insurance. I expected to feel elated with the accomplishment, but I just felt sad and relieved it was over. And then I saw the NEXT button.

NEXT dealt with life insurance. This is where you bet a huge corporation that you won't die. The joke's on them, as you always die. The joke is also on you, as you always die AND if you do so at an inopportune time, your beneficiary won't get paid. I do not know what happens if your beneficiary kills you, thus it's always better to follow the Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Get Caught.

As I'm no longer twenty (physically anyway), life insurance is important. Not for me, but for my wife. Structuring it smartly, I will never be worth more dead than alive. Life insurance comes in many types, with many options and many prices. Never having had life insurance before, every single one of them was foreign to me. There's term life, whole life, half life, and variable universal studios life. Some have premiums that go up. Some can be borrowed against. Some can't be paid out at all. And some allow you to visit Universal Studios at a small discount, in the middle of winter, in years that end with three. I asked my local expert, who, at that moment walked out the door for a smoke break. Unsure how that was going to help, I perused some web links, looking for prices. When there were prices at all, they were for several more types of insurance that I could not understand if I spent my entire life in life insurance. And they were all rated for thirty-year-old non-smoking women, of which I am only non-smoking. The other option was to ask for a quote online, which would no doubt result in constant calls from life insurance salesmen, which is only slightly less annoying than having to use Internet Explorer.

Where was my Subject Matter Expert? Simultaneously cleaning and on Mouse Patrol. I considered myself lucky that she was at least on the same floor as me. If I needed her on an emergent basis, I could always stand near her, gesticulating wildly and screaming at the top of my lungs, in hopes she'd notice me.

As it turns out, you can make your dog sole beneficiary.
If you have any questions, please ask. When she reads this, and she will, I'll be spending a lot of time on the couch, so I will be able to answer inquiries at all hours.

If you get nothing else from this entry, I hope you get a giggle and my single piece of wisdom around insurance: When the going gets tough, quit. It's better for your blood pressure and well-being in general. I did, and survived to write this blog entry. This will no doubt be a problem when I have to log back in (if I can) and re-fill out the same information all over again. I now need to sit with people much smarter than me (football players with traumatic brain injuries and rappers) to figure out which options I need.

Next week I'll tell you about my 401k. I anticipate the experience like I anticipate a dental visit - with me running as fast as I can in the opposite direction. And when I can't come up with any other new material, I'll tell you about the dream I just had. It was kind of like The Bachelor, but with eager women in skimpy black lingerie. Perhaps it was just like The Bachelor.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Remember when signing up for benefits involved someone from Human Resources handing you a pamphlet and forms to sign? I do not want to be accused of being a Luddite, but the electronic way just doesn't work.

We're Gonna Do Something DIFFRENT Tonight

The head of Germany's spy agency claims that Russian hackers will disrupt the upcoming election. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a potential winner. Whenever you don't want something to happen, claim that the Russians are going to hack it. This should be useful for everything from local elections to presidential elections to getting out of tests in school.

• Are you enjoying Uber? Know that with the latest software upgrade, the app is tracking your location, regardless of whether you're in an Uber or not, so long as you have it running in the background. And it wants access to your address book.  Take a moment and ponder what this means... your location, 24 hours per day, plus your contacts... that would be the end for me but I celebrate by not using Uber in the first place.

Kelloggs, the cereal people, has decided to pull its advertising from Breitbart, a right-wing news network. As soon as the news hit, Breitbart users initiated a boycott against Kelloggs. Things are shaping up to be interesting, with existing boycotts against other companies. I'm not exactly a Breitbart reader but this is shaping up to be an active season. There is actually a list of active boycotts, which becomes ridiculous as you have to check it every five minutes if you're shopping. Fortunately I'm already boycotting the NFL (I don't do sports), Pepsi ( you couldn't pay me to drink it), and various others.  The one that really confuses me is a potential banning of Trump's Twitter account. Do you really want to 'censor' the president's account? And what does this say about the media in general?

• The FBI has, through no surprise, gotten the legal OK to spy on any computer, anywhere in the world. All they need is a handy judge to approve things and they're off. Somehow I don't think this is the type of government the Founding Fathers had in mind. I urge you to read this.

Yes, it's the appliance you've been waiting for: the wifi-enabled 6-quart slow cooker. Walmart has it for a great price. The only problem is that it doesn't work if wifi is down and you can't hook it to your wifi anyway. Aside from that, it's a handy device and a bargain.

• Reminder not to wait to update Firefox and Tor browser. Do not put it off. Nasty hack available for it makes it unsafe to run. Period. If it asks you to upgrade, do so. If it doesn't ask, download the new version. Or don't, but your system might be used to hack something and you don't want the nice people at the FBI to stop by your place for a nice visit.

Most computer infections these days come from removable USB devices. With that in mind, you need to protect your systems, particularly the USB devices. No need to worry, folks, because now there's a USB Condom. The device technically disconnects the data pins of your device, allowing only electricity to flow. I'm not entirely sure you'd want to use a device without data, only to charge, but we are assured that this is THE device to have. I think I'll wait a bit.

• As if Faceyspaces weren't enough to get your Really Good Social Media Juices<tm> going, one can now be a Social Media Influencer. As best I can tell, if you have a Metric Shitload<tm> of followers, they apparently hang on your every word and will be influenced by the things you say (type). As if this weren't Boffo enough, you can add Social Media Influencer to your profile. This may encourage companies to give you Free Shit<tm>. It might also cause potential followers to laugh hysterically at you and all of your offspring, born or potential.  Amongst other things, the Influencers are generally good-looking, which rules me (and most of social media) out. Companies will PAY you for your influence. If there were only a commercial platform for sarcasm, I'd be rich beyond my wildest dreams.

One of the disadvantages of buying concert tickets online is the targeted ads from the ticket vendors. One sends me 'hand-picked suggestions'. After Rick Astley and Sarah Silverman, I unsubscribed. Apparently their algorithms are what we refer to as really f-d up. Also recommended was the For Today Farewell Tour. I didn't even know there was a First Tour.

• The inventor of the Big Mac has left the planet. I said I'd be nice to McDonalds, as they closed their Gaitlinberg store to provide food to residents and firefighters - a Fine Gesture. If I hadn't promised to be nice, I'd have said something like "arteries across the world have started unclogging," but I'm a man of my word.

Hey, have you been on the Adult Friend Finder site? They were hacked in October, alerted, and finally have their Best People on it. Just so you know, they also kept data on deleted accounts. Their passwords were not protected either.  Just don't, ok?

I sure picked a bad day to stop taking amphetamines. No, wait.. to sleep late. It's been a while since I got to sleep late. I didn't get to last weekend because of some work on a space project which I cannot divulge. Today was a day or pure joy - sleep until I was done. Then nap.

Almost on cue, the neighbor's company arrived. And when I say company, I mean the guys who showed up to cut down her tree.  I'm sure they were delightful guys (they were guys, or at least chicks with really deep voices) but I try not to mix tree-cutting with sleep. The neighbor called, bless her, to tell us to move our car out of the driveway, lest we have to submit a rather large insurance claim.  Can you imagine trying to figure out which insurance company is supposed to handle this? They could successfully keep this in the legal system so long that our estate would have to handle it. We'll have to leave instructions to disburse the money to the dog(s).

The actual tree-cutting wasn't all that bad, but the trucks were insane. I kept banging my head on the headboard and cursing the tree-downing profession. As if that weren't pleasant enough, they were disposing of the tree's remains on the spot, which meant a chipper. For those of you not familiar, it's a wheeled device into which they feed tree bits. It has a whirly chopping blade-thingy inside, which renders the tree bits to sawdust. One would think this would also be a great aid for disposing of bodies, but one would be incorrect. The evidence, as it were, would be all over the place. You need a device that will properly (and untraceably) dispose of the evidence (but don't tell anyone you read it here).

Wife warned me in advance not to let Marshall outside, as he'd want to stand there, like an idiot, barking his head off at them, not moving. Again, as if precisely on time, Marshall had to go outside. I think the wife knew before she left and was counting on my semi-dead state to not question and laugh hysterically at me once she left. Marshall used to bark when he wanted to go out. Now he stands there, whining pitifully. If that fails, he approaches, puts his head on my arm and whines. This will go on until he gets what he wants. This is also how he runs the entire house. He's now getting medically special dog food that he hates. So we located medically special dog food in varieties, like chicken and vegetables and beef stew. Let me tell you, there isn't a whine to be heard when he goes face-down into his food bowl. It's cleaned, so well that you couldn't tell it was a dog food bowl approximately 90 seconds ago. And a family of four could eat cheaper than one can of this food.

Half dead, I donned my shoes, checking to see if my pants were already in-place (they were - it was a good morning) and prepared to drag myself outside so I could watch him go to the bathroom (like he does to us every day) and keep him from barking like a loon at the tree guys. But Marshall, being much smarter than me, saw me putting on my shoes and decided that this meant I was going somewhere without him. He assumed his Sad Perch on the steps and prepared to look pitiful and alone. It took five minutes to convince him I was taking him outside. Once outside, he immediately rushed to the side of the house and started barking at the tree guys like a loon. This was confusing, as this is the same spot he uses to bark once at the neighbor so she will bring him a treat.

He thought he would evade my please to return to the house by hiding in the bushes. What he failed to realize was that it's almost winter and there are no leaves on the bushes under which to hide. I finally got him in the house, but not until after he discovered a convenient muddy puddle and stood in it for a bit, obviously contemplating the meaning of life or other Spaniel Mysteries. We now know why he comes in the house with wet paws and leaves sticking to him.

Good thing we made it into the house when we did, because Drama had just broken out with the tree guys. One guy, who we'll assume was the boss, was yelling at his minions, telling them not to come to work until they were ready to work. This progressed to how he was going to get two new minions because these two were nothing but grief. At this point, the smarter minion (we'll call him Leroy for no particular reason at all) fired up one of the heavy pieces of equipment, as if to signal to Boss that he couldn't hear him - he was too busy working.

I desperately wanted to go back to bed but couldn't. I wasn't too upset, though, as the unstable compound I slipped into the chipping device while they were arguing would combust the next time they turned it on.