Lonelier Than a Nun in a Room Full of Priests

I've been reading about cheap laptops. It never hurts to have a cheap second machine around, in case the first one goes tits up or only half the display displays.  There's a very interesting product called the Pinebook. It's a community-driven project to produce dirt cheap linux laptops. I can't find any reference to it working with Windows, sorry. At least I looked.

The first machine is the Pinebook. It comes with an 11" or 14" display and goes for the heavy price of $99. Before you do anything, read the review. There are some gotchas, but nothing showstopping. You have to decide. At this this price, it's worth it to have a laptop to learn linux. And when I say learn, it operates pretty much like Windows: you use the menu to choose a program and go. The program menus have everything you're used to: save, print, quit, etc. If you're clever, you can even make it look like Windows. There's not much of a learning curve - you hook it to your wireless and go. It runs all the same browsers except Internet Explorer [not a single snide comment from me].

BUT there's more!  Pine64 is taking preorders for the Pinebook Pro. At $199, it might just be a bargain. It has more power and other improvements. Keep in mind the above review is for the earlier $99 Pinebook, not the Pinebook Pro.

Here's one consideration: the laptops are designed to be bargains. They are not equipped with the latest and greatest processors. At this price for a brand new laptop, you have a bargain. It's absolutely fine for surfing, email, and other apps. I'm thinking about one. If you have any questions, ask.

I realize I don't have a ton of readers who use linux, but wanted to present it to everyone.  There are all sorts of linux laptops, from the specifically built power machines ($1,000 to $2,000 and up) to used Thinkpads ($cheap - you have to install linux, but it's known to work on these). It runs on most anything, but I'd avoid new laptops because there might not be drivers for everything yet. It has worked on the last 5 laptops I had, without issues.




As some of you know, my father died suddenly.
People who unaware of this ask me how he's doing. What do I say?

How is he?
He isn't.

I might need a better answer.



Remember the component engineer's classic definition of a connector:
it's a source of trouble that joins two other sources of trouble.



Dear lefty

• How many cocker spaniels does it take to change a lightbulb?
• One to distract Dad and one to eat Dad's dinner.

Today's Question: Why are there three, no, FOUR knots in Penny's leash?
The question here is not why there are knots. The question is what the response to the question should be. I beg your forgiveness? I have no idea? Is this an actual problem? Have you asked Penny? Is that the one we use for..... never mind.

• A Cape Cod study finds no easy way to stop shark attacks
• Don't sharks know there's a law against attacking us?

Today I identify as the First Lady's thong

• The pope warned against obesity.  Still no warning about being a young boy anywhere close to his minions....

No thank you, I'd rather take Cardio B to a hotel




The news is full of topics, mainly the fact that today is the first International Space Station spacewalk with two women.  A news story featured a professor of astronomy talking about this. I'm not sure how a studier of planets is qualified to speak about the ISS, but let's give her the benefit of doubt. She was all abuzz about showing that women can do it. "History is being made."

Ummm.... these are astronauts. They are incredibly highly qualified and trained. If they are not capable of a spacewalk, they wouldn't be there. NASA doesn't send astronauts to the ISS because of their plumbing. Will the news provide 24/7 coverage of the first two left handed astronauts doing a spacewalk? If you think about it, the people celebrating this are saying women have to prove themselves. That's sexist.

• The Postal Service is exploring the use of drones to deliver mail
• They're running into difficulty training them to be surly and late.

He started murdering women on South Florida, then became the worst serial killer in US history

• a 75 year old woman jumped to her death from the Costa Pacifica cruise ship's balcony.
• That was a very expensive suicide. Don't they have balconies at home?

I've ranted previously on unboxing videos, but one just annoyed me so you have to read an additional rant... Let's think about this a second. Someone got a videocam or phonecam and took video of someone literally opening a box and showing you the object. That's it. Even the people born without imagination find this ridiculous. If I want to watch a video of someone opening a box, I'll take some recreational pharmaceuticals and see it in my head. There was no voiceover in this video: just the sound of taking the object out of the box. It's like xmas, when you open a present.... riiiiiiippp. People watch this crap?






Heroes of the Stupid

A loyal reader was waiting for UPS to deliver a package. On the first day, it was 250 miles away, on its way. One the 2nd day, it had been misrouted. To Honolulu. That's approximately 5553 miles, with no driving directions available.

Ladies, you are warned not to use toothpaste to tighten your vagina. Among other things, it burns. This is on the heels of men using toothpaste to last longer in bed.  In other news, toothpaste sales are through the roof, as are emergency room visits.

The UK installed a knife surrender bin to curb knife crime. Criminals stole all the knives.   Hey Beto - how about a gun surrender bin?

A Dutch father and six adult children have been discovered living inside the cellar of a farmhouse, where they were waiting 9 years for the 'end of days.'




SJW Attack

Trump policies, racism may cause some black women's weight problems, professor says.

Track THIS

An Australian man, working for a Western Australia water management company, was invited to a meeting at work, with their equivalent of Human Resources. Every employee was given a PDA (Public Display of Affection or Personal Digital Assistant, depending on day of the week), to track where they were. His records stated that he was working at different places but there was no report from his PDA/tracker that he was there.

The fella had a thing for a certain snack food. The bag it came in was foil and mylar. He placed the PDA in the bag, which acted as a Faraday cage. For those of us not electronically oriented, it's a device from which no signals get in or escape. This prevented the PDA from ratting him out. A brief investigation showed that he was out playing golf. 140 times. Now there's a man dedicated to his work. Or something.

• it's time for my non-seasonal rant about unboxing. As we spend a lot of time online (admit it - you'll feel better), we might have seen this. This is a activity wherein you take a picture of something you got and post it online. We, who work in IT and have a more evolved and nuanced sense of sarcasm, can find no useful reason for this behavior. We also make Lemon Face when we see people posting pictures of their food. Or stupid Dog Filters.
• This behavior is particularly egregious in the world of musicians. Some perfectly affable gent will take a picture of his brand new, just released effects box. Every reader is excited because they haven't gotten theirs yet or they're waiting for a demo on YouTube, to figure out whether they need this box or not.
• And what greets them, after the headline "New Illudium P32 Explosive Space Modulator"?  A flipping picture. Gee, that's helpful. Stereotypes don't appear from a vacuum, hence the stupid guitar player.

You've got a cell phone. Of course you've got a cell phone.

You have your location services on, either through ignorance, because of the Gee Whiz app, or you simply don't care. Even if location is off, you can still be tracked. What kinds of information is tracked and what might be traced back to you? Some ad companies will allow you to opt-out but want your Wifi and Bluetooth MAC addresses. Yeah, right. Does it matter that Google collected information anyway, after these were opted out?

Whether you have an existing or new android cell phone, here are five simple tips to keep it safe.

• What price security?  Paypal purchased TIO, a payment processor, for $230 million. TIO got hacked into. TIO halted all activities to avoid further losses. Meanwhile, the Personally Identifiable Information of about 1.6 million customers leaked. Paypal announced that it had found issues with TIO's data security program that did not adhere to its own standards.
• This infers that Paypal did not check TIO's security standards.
• Is a $230 million acquisition a mere pittance - too low to bother checking out its security? Where's the line? A billion?
• In addition to not bothering to secure itself (it owns TIO, therefore it's Paypal), the business has provided a lot of grief to a lot of people. Even though I was a customer, I'd advise not using it.

One of the largest (Chinese) manufacturers of drones stands accused of helping China spy on the US. Because we buy Chinese drones.... what could possibly go wrong? Once again, the government keeps us safe.

• It's a good thing the holidays are coming up. We now get treated to all sorts of ridiculous xmas commercials, some showing up as early as Halloween. This year we're treated to talking carrots and meerkats with German accents, that seem to go on forever. The Brits get a continuing story of two people who met on public transportation and are trying to hook up. This must have something to do with a cell phone provider, or why would they bother bothering us with this nonsense. The only reason I don't throw the screen across the room is that the female is cute, with a lovely, understandable Scottish accent. And I can't afford another screen. As I type this, I swear to you that the commercial just came on.

Yeah, I'm old school. Up til the current car, all my tires were cheap and large. The current car has tires that are small, with large rims and tiny (not thick) tires. What do you suppose would happen if current cars used real tires? My guess is a better ride, but I have absolutely no knowledge of tires, except that mine cost over $200 each, where they used to cost $60-80. Aside from the sound of Get off My Lawn, this is a genuine question. Any car people readers?

• Think you're busy this holiday season? The poor folks at Amazon have been working 55 hour weeks, falling down on the job, and taken away in ambulances. Fortunately the problem was solved when the executives jumped to inaction and offered the employees small chocolates.

Everybody's favorite right wing tongue, Gene Simmons, was banned for life from Fox News. According to reports, he barged in on a staff meeting and exposed his torso, shouting, "Hey chicks - sue me!" Furthermore, he told Michael Jackson pedophilia jokes and mocked the intelligence of the staffers.

The article did not explain, however, why he was banned.

• Everybody's favorite perennial presidential candidate, Vermin Supreme, sued after he was denied a permit to bring ponies to a Hillary Clinton book signing.

Vermin Supreme for president

• After brief research, which is the only kind of research I do, Vermin is now a libertarian. Considering the recent candidates, as well as the Guy in the Loincloth, Vermin will be a welcome change.
• Vermin's 2020 slogan: How could I possibly be any worse?
• Before I decide on whether he gets my vote, I want to know if there will be personalized boots for our heads, or will they just say Vermin Supreme on them? How does one go about sizing them?

Today's Stupid Commercial: What worries you most about your financial future?

One of the kids pops up and says, I don't have any money.

• Also overheard on tv: "she's in an advanced stage of pregnancy." 
• What's that - the baby's halfway out?

Marshall Update: as mentioned previously, the oncologist canceled Marshall's last chemo treatment because he was doing so well. This week's appointment was looking around for lesions in his mouth. It turns out he's not fond of fingers in his mouth, much like the rest of us. 

So after all that, the onco wants to operate, to remove the lesion and go with pills for a while. When we got the estimate, one of us turned white, the other turned green. When we said we'd need to think about this, the doc said no problem - it just has to be done within two weeks. With oral chemo, it'll give him 6-9 months. Oddly enough, other options we discussed earlier would give him the same amount of time.

No one mentioned another operation until today.

Can't help but feel we're being led down the Golden Path, only we're giving away all the gold. Last I checked, neither of us are vets, so it's not like we can ask medically relevant questions. As you'd imagine, this is somewhat upsetting.

Mind you, Marshall's in great spirits; eating like mad, drinking like madder, and demanding everything be dropped so he gets what he wants at that moment. He's got bounce in his step, almost like a puppy. He's leaping on furniture he couldn't six months ago. 

The only criterion is that he's pain-free and comfortable.

this is probably a bad blog to read if you're an Apple fan

YOU - Get Outta the Box

For the longest time, I've seen online references to unboxing. As best I can tell, it's pictures or video of someone's new toy. Over at Reddit, I've seen a few unboxing pictures of guitar effects boxes and they bother the hell out of me. They're essentially pictures of the effect, sometimes with the box in which it came. And that's it.

I dunno about you but looking at a box then a product doesn't tell me a lot. I'm somewhat more interested in how the unit performs, even a subjective description.  When I repond this way, I'm roundly shouted down (because apparently people like to look at boxes and pictures without descriptions).

Spurred on by my wife's recent acquisition of a Samsung G6 phone (don't ask what happened to the old phone), I've been looking into new cell phones. We have different carriers (of course we do - we're married) so the range of available phones is slightly different. My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy III, which is approximately as old as dirt (in cell phone years). This phone has performed admirably across the years but I'd like something a little bigger and with more horsepower under the figurative hood.

After a small amount of research (who the hell wants to do days of intensive research - we want it NOW!), it would appear my choices are the G6 (how cute - matching phones) or the Droid Turbo. The G6 is newer, full of bling and features not-so-hot battery life (barely 24 hours officially, less in real life). Furthermore, it has no additional SD slot or replaceable battery (shades of iDevices).  The Turbo is actually a little larger and a bit heavier. This doesn't hold true at home, as someone (who shall remain nameless) purchased a phone cover with platinum-ish stone-looking protrusions on the rear, making it about as heavy as a Ford. The kids, as well as the mother-in-law, love it.

Continuing my reasearch, I located a genuine Droid Turbo Unboxing Video on YouTube. The fellow who was kind enough to share his observations started off by introducing himself, using a really Hip, Today Kinda Name that makes no sense but attempts to make his white self look more black. The screen consisted of two hands, gesticulating wildly. He starts off the 'content' section by picking up the black box containing the phone, commenting on how the box reminds him of older boxes for phones.

Seriously?

Seriously.

After this fascinating and enlightening commentary, Fly Boy actually opens the box. He takes out the phone and puts it aside, while moving on to the more interesting stuff: the charger and booklets. Eventually he gets around to picking the phone up and actually turning it on!  And then he does what everybody expects: he ends the video.

That's right, you heard that right, the video is over.

This made me angry enough to kill puppies.  I'm a pretty literal guy but an unboxing video is literally commenting on the box and taking out the item?  And people watch this stuff!  Are we too old to 'get' the internet? Someone please tell me this is a joke. Perhaps the sequel to this video features the host pulling the phone out of boxes made of different materials ("The phone definitely performs better when it comes from a cardboard box, as opposed to a plastic one").

Someone also please tell me if you have any recent experience with these or other cell phones. I hear good things about LG too but I don't think they're current.

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Michael Moore just tweeted "Disarm the police". This is as brilliant a strategy as bringing order to Baltimore by hiring temporary police from the KKK.