Captivity - Day 26 Social Distancing from my family

Probably because the manufacturing is done cheaply, I tend to scratch the letters off keyboards. Last week it was M and N. Even though I don't look at the keyboard, I'm now mixing up N and M. It's like I've got eyes in my fingers. Or maybe I've been inside too long.....

Since the last vacuum fought and won, tonight is the really cheap vacuum. I'm saying this because maybe if I say it, I'll actually do it. Odds are strictly against it.

I got an email from my car: it misses me.

So does the vacuum.

The doctor called, checking on the new medicine. I told him to hold on, while I caught the purple giraffe in the kitchen. He said something about dosage adjustment and got off the phone quickly....

I have a harem at work. Working from home is making things very difficult.(especially the spankings)...

When your doctor does telemedicine and can't quite get the video working, should you find a different doctor? Good thing it's not the psychiatrist.

I would stand 3' from a random stranger, not wear a mask, go out for no particular purpose, drive 95 mph, not shelter-in-place, and sit inside a restaurant, all so I could go to a guitar show. I miss them, like Madonna misses facelifts.

Another side effect of the constant rain is that the grass grows like mad. As we know, I'd rather cut my own limbs off than mow. That said, the neighbors have taken up mowing. Working from home has lost its luster. The next door neighbors are now dueling with the electric tool neighbors for stereo cacophany supremacy. The next door neighbor doesn't have a lot of grass, so I think she's mowing the same patch over and over again, to annoy me. 8 hours later, still going. Perhaps they're replanting the grass, one blade at a time.

UPDATE: I vacuumed AND mowed. The ($&#ing mower took me for a header on the steps. Neighbors are already nervous - I can't shoot the thing.

Mrs lefty goes food shopping more now than before Idiot Governor ordered everyone confined to quarters. Shoe stores have not been declared essential (Idiot Governor has very few women on his staff). Perhaps I need to do a bag check. Some Targets will let you buy food but not clothes. "That?" That's been there for weeks. It's for my mom."

"That guitar? It's been there for weeks. It's for your mom."

===============================

This is where I put the good wishes, concern, and touchy-feely stuff.

Since I'm not doing that today, you can get f'd.

Let the Whining Continue

There was a successful cryptojacking attack on the LA Times.
Why?
Because somebody did not secure their Amazon Cloud setup.

Are you beginning to see commonalities?



The moon will be getting its first mobile telephone network next year. This will be used for high-definition streaming from the surface back to earth, in preparation for the first privately funded moon mission.

Shortly thereafter, there will be live streaming of porn to and from the moon, quickly followed by ministries beaming the bible up to the godless heathens that might be occupying the dead satellite. The joke will be on the ministries, as the side of the moon perpetually in the dark is a monitoring station for the aliens who created us.

The connection will be crystal clear with no dropouts until the first subscriptions are sold, at which point service will go immediately to hell, with the 4G connection dropping to 1G, and only texting possible.

• Apple Cofounder Steve Wozniak (friends call him Mary), admits he was scammed out of $70,000 in bitcoin.
• In unrelated news, the new iPhones have gone up $200 each.

The other day, a black woman wrote on social media about how great it was to be alive to experience the creations of Black geniuses of our time, specifically plays and movies.

This lady must be very young, and obviously has an agenda.

Although I never got the chance to see him firsthand, Jimi Hendrix's music will live on forever. As will Freddie/Albert/BB King, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, Billy Preston, Robert Johnson, and scores of others.

Fortunately, I can say I have lived during Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton, as well as Frank Zappa, Eric Johnson, and Robin Trower. It just never occurred to me to be thankful that I was alive to enjoy these white geniuses of our time.

It would be difficult to do this now, but if you were to ask Jimi, he'd tell you that music was colorless. Musicians are colorless to me. I sure don't refer to Jimi as a great black guitar player. Or Jeff as a great white guitar player. They're pioneers of the guitar, beyond just talented.

Every now and then some tiny part of me called The Inner Hippie pops out.
He wants to know why we can't see art as art. He says that until we do, we will be divided.

Cellbrite, an Israeli company is now a favorite with the US Government, as it can unlock iPhones. Are we surprised? This is our government, completely out of control, under the pretext of National Security. Even worse, it's going to be difficult for iDevice owners to be Smug for any reason other than the price they paid for the device.

• NSA director Mike Rogers says the president hasn't given the NSA the authority to battle Russian interference.  He's right - the NSA would never do anything without authorization or that would violate anyone's privacy.

• About a year after I sounded the alarm over Marshall amplifiers with Bluetooth capabilty, Big Fish<tm> in the security industry are now sounding the alarm. Greater validation would be had if anybody saw my original claim.

No more experienced a politician than Oprah Winfrey said that she'll run for president if God tells her to.  Great, another attempted leader who hears voices. Don't forget - God also spoke directly to George Bush.

• 800 illegal aliens in Northern California avoided capture because the mayor warned them about ICE raids. Perhaps they should deport the mayor too.  Justice Department is seeing if this amounts to obstruction of justice charges.
• I was always told you can't pick and choose which laws you will obey.
• Rest assured that if you or I .....

I have an old laptop. It's very capable still, but needs a new keyboard.  This would be its third keyboard. For some reason, I go through them. I'm not sure why. It would have absolutely nothing to do with pounding it when it doesn't function properly. Last time I made the mistake of buying a keyboard from an unnamed country that makes chips that spy on us. It was very reasonably priced and the writing on the keys wore off in short order. I'm looking at proper keyboards and they're going for ridiculous prices. I'm starting to remember why I went Chinese. One official keyboard from the laptop manufacturer would cost half of what the laptop now sells for used. In related news, one can get a hell of a laptop deal on Ebay, especially if you're familiar with the model. Never hurts to have a spare machine.

As a grizzled IT veteran, I can tell you that you haven't lived until you've had to perform surgery on a laptop. This being the 2000s, there was a YouTube video showing the procedure, as well as sites with instructions.

Currently, the keyboard has no letters on a number of keys, one being I. Just to be amusing, the I key also requires an extra press or two to register. If it weren't for spellcheck, I'd be missing a blog full of I's.  An't that a btch? I must also keep both eyes on the screen at all times, as the keyboard has a habit of highlighting whole paragraphs and deleting them while I type. Spaces don't show up or happen twice, as do Rs. It's like having gremlins in the machine and not knowing when they're going to strike. Yes, I can use an external keyboard but space considerations make it difficult.

And just for fun, sometimes one of these things happens when I'm typing on a different machine.

• California just approved driverless car testing. Until now, the law mandated a backup driver.
• The California Mayors' Association has called for a halt to driverless vehicles, stating that they take jobs away from illegal aliens.
• Besides - what could possibly go wrong?

But I'm Not Dead Yet!

Neurologists studying the brains of nine people as they died discovered that the brain continues to work for minutes after the heart stops beating. The observation concluded that the brain dies with a final wave of activity called "spreading depression". They liken the sensation to living in Philadelphia.

Think about this... when does one die? At what point do they go toward the light and see the Easter Bunny? How much faster is rebooting a brain than Windows? How long has Nancy Pelosi been dead? I have questions...

• If you attend a number of schools in England, it's possible you're on camera, broadcasting live to a website. Why? Bad default security on the webcams, as well as no one concerned about security at the school to change the bad default passwords.
• This illustrates why it's important for everyone to change the default passwords on any device. You wouldn't want your BabyCam to be broadcasting live to some web page accessible to the world. Unless you're an exhibitionist, you also wouldn't want your bedroom security camera to be broadcasting to the internet..

A quantum physics experiment has proven quantum communication is possible with a single particle. If any of us has any clue about quantum physics, this is pretty exciting news, done by superposition, the phenomenon through which particles can effectively occupy two places at once.

Quantum particles can be on, off, or both; proving they're female.

Revenge of the Lions

• a woman was killed by a lion at a South Africa game lodge today.
• Earlier this month a suspected poacher was mauled to death and eaten by a pack of lions close to South Africa's famed Kruger National Park.
• Lions 2 - Humans 10,247

In Chicago, congressional candidate Benjamin Thomas Wolf is featured smoking pot in his campaign ad. He supports legalization of marijuana. His competition supports a needle exchange. He is featured shooting heroin.

• Ryan Seacrest's former personal stylist, Suzie Hardy, alleges sexual aggression; grinding his erect penis against her while clad only in his underwear, groping her vagina, and at one point slapping her buttock so hard that it left a large welt still visible hours later.
• Reached for comment, Seacrest apologized and said that he just wanted to see what it was like to do it to a woman.

The Offended Files

Residents of a nudist community in Florida (where else?) are upset because their mail carrier refuses to deliver mail. The carrier says she is 'offended by their naked lifestyle'. The Postal Service will not force her to go where she's not comfortable. No word on whether they are going to ask someone else to deliver the mail. Several hundred male carriers have volunteered for the job.

• The Catholic church is considering married priests to ease the shortage of clergy. Because orgies and molesting children aren't a serious problem yet.

Hillary Clinton, upset that America is celebrating the 15 month anniversary of her not being president, is warning the person who was elected that "The Russians are still coming."  All over the country, dead horses continue to let out low moans.

• It's not that we're not serious about security, it's just that we don't care. Manufacturers are currently using compromised firmware in implantable devices... you know...  like pacemakers... So if you feel like dancing or clutching your chest, it's not your imagination.
• Remember that minor Equifax hiccup that divulged ridiculous amounts of your personal data? Just announced: 2.4 million more US consumer names and partial drivers licenses stolen. The unrelated news is that the CFPB dropped the investigation and refuses to reopen it.

There's another new tv show. This is never good news. To say it is horrid would be synonymous with new. It's called My Four Wives. No, this does not refer to multiple personalities. It's some dude with four wives, families, and houses.

Why?


Perhaps the second or third question to come to mind is what the hell this guy does to be able to afford four families.... most of us can barely afford one.  Four mortgages... I can't afford my dog.

Now let's get to the crux of the biscuit: four wives.
Four.

Wives.
How many of us can say we mastered the art of one spouse?

Did the fellow simply not get it right the first time and insist on making the same mistake three more times? Does he have some fatal desire for nagging? Was his own personal army not building up quickly enough, so he enlisted three more factories? Wouldn't it be faster to adopt? What does the will look like? He must be fabulously wealthy because he can't possibly have time to work.  What have the psychologists had to say about this horrible need to hurt himself - can't he just cut, like everyone else? If he hasn't had a vasectomy, his wives should make sure he doesn't get within ten feet of them at all times. If he goes to a bar, do the four of them form a human shield around him? Does he sleep with more than one at a time? Do they like girls too? What does he put in their milk - they look fabulously happy. Too happy, in fact.

He obviously didn't do this because he likes supermodels.
Maybe the families are a corporation.. Jason Sperm, LLC. Four Too Many, Inc. The Fertility Group.

You have to figure he's a member of one of those polygamous Mormon sects. I have nothing against Mormons or polygamy; one should be able to choose the instrument of one's own death. You want more than one wife? Go ahead - it's your funeral.

The commercial showed them all flying somewhere.  Never mind four houses... this is how you can tell the guy has too much money: that many plane tickets. Whenever they need to go somewhere, they don't call an airline, they call a tour guide. "I need thirteen for Polygamy Class - it's right before Coach."

• After intense taste-testing, we recommend that if you wish to try Chocolate Lucky Charms, you go with Chocolate Frosted Flakes with Marshmallow Bits.  Trust us on this.

from @RealPeerReview
Here's a classic paper written by a male feminist:

I have heard more plausible stories of little green men from meth addicts.
The author was subsequently stripped of his skirt by actual female feminists.

• A Big Security Dude<tm> found a paper postulating that space aliens could send us malware capable of destroying humanity. In retaliation, we'll send them Windows.

In legal news, Google is being sued by a fired YouTube recruiter for wrongful termination.  Google was unhappy that their workforce was largely white and Asian males, so they tried to 'rectify the situation by working harder to find candidates who could do the job and who are also traditionally underrepresented minorities.'

Per the lawsuit:

In April of 2017, Google’s Technology Staffing Management team was instructed to immediately cancel all Level 3 (0-5 years experience) software engineering interviews with every single applicant who was not either female, Black, or Hispanic and to purge entirely any applications by non-diverse employees from the hiring pipeline. Plaintiff refused to comply with this request.

Despite lacking legal law linguistics, this sounds illegal.
Google vows to defend itself, saying that it has a “clear policy to hire candidates based on their merit, not their identity.."  Unless they're white or Asian males, of course.

How many times do you hear that any job area is populated by Asian males? Numerically, that's odd. On the other hand, hockey is completely free of Asians, while basketball and football are majority African American. Do you suppose the NFL will be sued by a recruiter because he refused to hire more whites or Asians?

My head continues to explode over a topic that's becoming more visible lately: Universal Basic Income. 

A CNBC article explores this topic in greater detail. 

The premise is that the government gives everybody a basic income.

I keep thinking I'm not understanding this correctly and asking Who's gonna pay for this?

I wrote previously on Stockton, California, which has a pilot program, handing out $500 monthly. This doesn't bother me as much, as it's being done on a private grant. But in the future....

Who's gonna pay for this?

Understand that the government has no money. All government money comes from We the People. So when the government is going to provide a basic income, where is the money going to come from? 

A poll shows 48% of Americans support a UBI.

These are obviously the ones who haven't asked Who's gonna pay for this?

A proponent of UBI, speaking at the World Economic Forum had this to say:

"The claim is often made that if you give people a basic income, they'll become lazy and stop doing work," Standing said. "It's an insult to the human condition. Basic incomes tend to increase people's work rather than reduce it."

Apparently this fellow has never heard of welfare.

But wait - it gets better....

"People are saying, 'Look we cannot let inequality continue to grow, because the political consequences could be a disaster'," Standing said, pointing to the recent rise of more authoritarian figures. 

You don't think there's any bias there, do you?

The most popular solution is the federal government sending a monthly check to everyone, regardless of earnings or employment. An estimate of the cost to provide everybody with $10,000 annually is three trillion dollars.  This is more than 3/4 of the entire yearly federal budget. It's allegedly more than the military budget, so there's no worry of it ever coming to pass.

Who's gonna pay for this?

Americans are a sad lot, with 80% saying that companies that benefit from artificial intelligence should pay higher taxes to fund UBI.  They also support changing the name of the country to United Socialists of America.

One reason I vote libertarian is to protect myself from people like this.

To be clear, I support helping people who need help due to disability or short term for job loss. UBI would take everybody's money and give it to... everybody.

Read the article. Your head could explode too!

It's Raining Laptop Parts

Everyone has had one of those days. You know, the kind of day when Murphy's Laws are the only laws that apply (and I am including gravity). When, despite your best efforts, you can do no right. When it rains and snows on your parade, causing most of the marchers to slip and fall over, with the rest of the parade tripping over the first group to go down. This domino effect causes more snow and ice, cancelling the parade and putting most of the marchers in the hospital, along with some of the spectators. At this point, insurance declares they won't cover the emergency room bill because it's an Act of God (even the people who tripped over the people who slid on the ice and fell down).

Where was I?

Oh yeah, one of Those Days.

The dog woke me up in the morning, for some attention. This is the first time he has done this. As it turned out, I had overslept and he was acting as an alarm clock.  Why haven't I learned to listen to the dog yet?

Stumbling into clothes and out of the bedroom, my glasses somehow managed to fly off the table and the trash declared that it needed to be taken out. The can is specially designed so no matter what size bag you use, it gets stuck coming out, causing all sorts of grief, cursing and hurling the can about, in the vain hope that it will free the errant bag. If and when the bag is eventually freed, it has new and improved holes in it. In places where they will be of no assistance whatsoever.

It was a bad day at work, requiring eight hours on the phone with my colleague in a different state. My ears hurt.  Once home, I sat contentedly with my laptop, checking email and doing Laptop Things. Only some of the keys felt weird. This was probably related to the somewhat dried sticky stuff on some of the keys. WHAT dried sticky stuff? Wifey didn't know and the pets were playing dumb (they're surprisingly good at it), regardless of the fact that the sticky stuff that stuck was not there last night.

I could feel it building.

At this point, the laptop started behaving as though it had gone psychotic, with random cursor movements and wacky program behavior. Either that or a hacker had gotten control and was randomly banging on random keys for his own amusement. He could have been watching the entire event for the sake of laughter, only I had taped up the camera because I'm Tinfoil Hat Security<tm>.

Reboot. This worked, for a grand total of three minutes, at which point the poltergiest returned, randomly typing nonsensical emails and sending them to the NSA. The joke was on me because the NSA already read all of my emails. The website I was reading jumped to strange adult sites, or at least that's what I told the FBI when they came to the door.

I got angry.

Cleverly, I decided it was the keyboard, as it was typing stuff by itself and the onscreen keyboard just sat there mocking me, as if it were nothing but an art project, like the CHANGE LIGHT buttons on traffic lights (or turn signals). Off to the private stockroom I went, to locate an external keyboard for testing purposes.  It was at about this point when I couldn't find many things I needed and when I tried, stuff came out of nowhere for the express purpose of falling on my head.

So I got angry.
And started screaming, because we all know that fixing computers requires a healthy dose of expletives. The dog can sense when it's coming on, at which time he runs off to the relative safety of some place that isn't near Daddy. The cat, as you'd imagine, just sits there, not caring.

Have you ever seen someone with a huge ergonomic keyboard on their lap and a laptop on a table in front of them? Someone who just discovered that the huge ergonomic keyboard on his lap would work but he needed a mouse too.

I got angry.
This time I let loose such a barrage that my friend in two counties over could hear me.

I managed to locate a mouse without much fanfare, except for the requisite amount of things materializing just for the purpose of falling about my head and shoulders.

So naturally I yelled at the wife, because she was not as smart as the dog, who was still hiding.

One external keyboard and mouse later, I had the system up. For three minutes.

So I got angry.
The neighbors were running up and down the street, yelling "EARTHQUAKE", as I growled in my best satanic voice at the errant laptop.

I was at the most horrific point I could be: time to take apart the laptop. I have a very reasonable fear of opening laptops even though I have built my own computers since day one.  Laptops have tiny little screws that hide themselves from view as soon as you try to open it up. After losing only two screws, you barely had time to notice the spring that sprung from the laptop, like Donald Trump fleeing a room full of unattractive women.

So I went to the place that has all the answers: the web. There were a whole bunch of guides to replacing keyboards and I decided the best one was the one from HP, even though they were the manufacturer of the laptop. It was pretty detailed or at least the first step was. They told me to remove the battery, which I nailed on the first try. Then they told me to remove the accessory panel. WHAT accessory panel? There was no part on the laptop with loud yellow letters that said ACCESSORY PANEL. This was because the people who write the manuals already know how to work the equipment - screw the consumers. And because I'm so attention-addled, by the time I look at the keyboard, I can't remember what the directions said.

After a surprisingly short read and only losing two screws (and something that might have been memory), I actually managed to locate the keyboard. Of course it's not that simple, nosirree. You have to remove three cables before the keyboard will come out.  Have you ever SEEN keyboard cables? They're tiny little pieces of plastic with many tiny little wires on them, roughly the size of peach fuzz but harder to see. You have to pull up the restraining bar then yank (ever so gently pull) the cable out of its connector. Go ahead - find the restraining bar, I dare you. Then try putting the cable BACK in the connector. It would be easier to bring Michael Jackson back and have Sofia Vergara agree to marry him.

Finally I removed said keyboard. I felt like the Champion of the World.  I could have done anything at that point. Anything except mowing the lawn, of course.   Then it was time to worry that the laptop wouldn't work without its keyboard. Fortunately it worked wonderfully. And when I say wonderfully, I mean it booted halfway and put something on the screen that looked like HAHAYOU'RESCREWED.

Then I got angry.
SWAT appeared outside the house, complete with Armored Personnel Carriers and automatic weapons. I think I even saw a sniper on the Crazy Lady's roof next door. It didn't surprise me much, as there's usually someone with a gun on the Crazy Lady's roof.

One more reboot seemed to solve the problem, although I swear I could hear the laptop laughing at me way down under the memory, right before the hard drive. It was being masked by the fan.

Emboldened by my hard-earned (and very loud) success, I decided to disembowel the keyboard, in hopes of fixing it before having to order a new one.  Yeah, right.  There are fewer screws in a Lincoln Navigator than in a keyboard. And they're half the size of a moderate ant (moderate being not right-wing or left-wing). It took an acetylene torch to separate the halves of the keyboard, partially due to the sticky stuff. Before you get that smirk on your face, the sticky stuff was brown and probably semi-dried soda. After I got the halves separated, there was laughter. Healing laughter. Laughter from me and laughter from the keyboard. Laughter because there was simply no way I was going to be able to fix the mess.  It was done. The keyboard won. I ordered another, oblivious of the fact that I needed to order a backlit keyboard. All I have to do is sit back and wait 10-15 days until Amazon ships it (from China). There should be a note on all Amazon products from overseas: WARNING: SHIPS FROM MONGOLIA - requires 30 days to arrive (stupid Mongorians).

I needed a small win. Something to save face. Something to take my mind off the soda-ruined keyboard and the random stuff attacking me. So I decided to type out this rant. On my cell phone.  What I always forget is that typing on my cell phone only serves to ratchet up my anxiety and make me MAD. Every time I hit a space, it ignores me. When I turn it longways, the keys aren't even as tall as the shorter way and it produces a comma for each space I type. I'm a dyslexic typist so that doesn't help either. By the time I'm two sentences in, I'm so upset that it takes all I have not to fuse the phone into the laptop and hurl them both across the room, through the tv, through the outside wall, hitting whoever it is on the Crazy Lady's roof with the sniper rifle.

When I finally put the laptop back together with its external devices and assured myself it worked, I stopped for the night. I sat down on the couch and exhaled, at which time my wife's laptop groaned and plummeted to the floor.

So I got angry.

Samsung Galaxy 10 - Initial Impressions

I started my tablet life a while back, when my work carrier gave me a Xoom to evaluate.  It was large enough but heavy and not particularly ready for prime time, or at very least, not ready to be put into the hands of the public.

The next unit was a Samsung 7 tablet.  I have had the 7 for many months and it follows me everywhere.  It is supercharged with a 32g card, rooted, tweaked and forced to do my bidding [insert evil laughter].  I had a feeling what my main complaint was going to be right off the bat: it was too small.  Actually it was too small and just a little too old.

In spite of these shortcomings, the 7 served me well.  It started to accompany me to meetings, where the bottom fell out, kinda.  It was simply too small to be effective.  Taking notes was a PITA.  Aside from that, there's nothing really wrong with the unit.

So I decided it was time to check into ten inch tablets.  Much to my dismay, the field had not changed at all from before.  I told my friendly T-Mobile rep that, like all men, size was important, so I wanted to upgrade to a ten inch tablet.  She gave me the choice of the Samsung Galaxy 10 or nothing so I wisely chose the 10.

As any reader of the blog knows, I hate iDevices, so that was out even if it was a choice.  It astounds me that with the success of the iPad, there aren't tons of worthy competitors, even with T-Mobile.

T-Mobile got the 10 to me with blazing speed, as in the next day.

OPENER UP!


The Galaxy 10 is one sleek, slim device.  There were all sorts of OOHs and AAHs as I unboxed it and my coworkers checked it out.  The Galaxy 7 is a rather bulky affair.  The Galaxy 10 is just a shade heavier but the weight is better distributed.

First up is inserting the SIM card and charging the beast.  The included USB to Galaxy cable appears to be the same as the Galaxy 7 but colored differently.  There was a charger in the box also, plus a few small meaningless booklets.  It was a pretty short learning curve and the getting started booklet handled things well.

LAYOUT

When held in landscape mode, the speakers are on the sides.  The main connector is on the bottom. The power switch and volume rocker are on top, as is the SIM slot.  There is no place for an additional SD card, which is disappointing, but there is an adapter available that allows an SD card and USB access.  I don't believe we should have to pay an additional thirty dollars to use SD and USB but I'm funny that way.

Onscreen keyboards are an acquired taste.  They're fairly useless on a cell phone.  On a Galaxy 7 only the landscape keyboard is usable.  On the 10, both keyboards are good, as one would expect with more screen real estate.  And the screen real estate is nice.  The display is bright and sharp.  There is a ton of room to put shortcuts or widgets (or not).

ARE THERE CAMERAS?


You betcha there are cameras.  There are two: one facing you (lower resolution for video chatting) and one facing away (higher resolution for pictures and video).  I didn't bother checking the specs but they're not a secret.  I seem to remember 5 megapixels 720 video for the picture-taking side.

As things seem to go these days, there is no case.  In scouting the available cases I noticed some variety, including cases with built-in bluetooth keyboards.  The case is not optional: you need one to protect the device.  A side benefit to some is a stand that adjusts.  You don't want to type on a flat tablet, external keyboard or not.  Be aware that you will need a special case if you want to keep the device plugged in.  Look for an opening on the bottom, through which you will put the cord.

MORE FEATURES

A pleasant surprise was the available volume.  There was plenty of it, unlike my Sensation phone.

The onscreen layout is a little different from the 7.  There are no dedicated buttons on the bottom.  Instead the app button is up top (why?) and there are soft buttons at the bottom for the main functions.  There is even a screenshot button (complete with annoying shutter noise).  In fact, one of my first duties was to kill all the noises and blinkies.  I'm a big boy and don't need a noise every time I hit a button or a program comes up.  Nor do I need the haptic (vibrating) feedback with every key press.

There are five screens by default.  You should never run out of space or screens.   Like most android devices, you can populate the screen with shortcuts, widgets, wallpaper, live wallpaper, and presumably dead wallpaper.

There are the usual rotating effects but also a new tilt function, which can control screen size or brightness.  I haven't had a chance to mess with this yet; I have brightness on AUTO for now.  There is a button to allow apps designed for smaller screens to fill the available space or pan in.

APPS

The Galaxy 10 comes with Alarm, Asphalt 6, Blio, Books, browser, calculator, calendar, contacts, Dropbox, ebook, email, files, gallery, Gmail, Google Search, Latitude, maps, Market, media hub, memo, messaging, MobileLife, Google Music, music player, navigation, pen memo, photo editor, places, Pulse, Qello, Quickoffice, security, Slacker, social hub, talk, TegraZone, video chat, video player, voice search, world clock, YouTube, and Zinio.  Your mileage will vary by provider.

Quite frankly, I'd love to be able to remove most of the included apps but I can't.  I suspect this will require rooting, which I haven't considered or checked on yet.  You cannot remove Slacker, Zinio, or any of the social apps.  While I like Slacker, I stopped installing it because it seems to turn itself on all of the time, regardless of whether I'm listening to it or not.  And I have as much need for social apps as I do for female plumbing.

As android people know, installing your own favorites is a matter of going to the Market, finding the programs and pressing INSTALL.   Here are some of the apps that make my life easier:

• gStrings - guitar tuner
• Premier Guitar, TabApp Pro, Guitar Squid - guitar goodies
• Drudgereport, World Newspapers, Sparse RSS - news
• ES File Explorer
• WiFi and Airplane Mode widgets
• QuickPic - superior to included Gallery
• Opera Mini - browser
• ConnectBot, AndFTP, Remote VNC - remote access tools
• Wolfgang's Vault, XiaaLive Lite - streaming radio
• Scanner Radio - listen to police and fire scanners worldwide
• and 3 versions of Angry Birds for my nephews

Your mileage will vary.


SECURITY

As with all phones and tablets, there is a plethora of features that might look nice but ultimately will suck the small amount of privacy you have left from your device faster than you can say Illegal Wiretapping.  Do yourself a favor and turn off the location tracking features.  There is no significant reason for anyone to know exactly where you are, either via satellite tracking or wifi/cellular tracking.  If you absolutely must let the entire universe know what you're doing and where, this is what Faceyspaces is for.  Or Twitter.  Log in and let everyone know that it's 5:15 and you've just had a terrific potty experience at Barnes&Noble.

Don't forget to go into the camera app and turn off geotagging.

OVERALL

I've only had the device for a few hours but I can tell I'm going to seriously enjoy it.  The larger screen will make all the difference for viewing anything and note-taking.   The nephews will love the look of Angry Birds and the wife will love some of the games I loaded for her.

More as it comes to me....