Unmasked

Good Morning.  And how are we all doing today?  I had a good night's sleep so I'm up and raring to go.  Now ain't that nice?

The temps are supposed to be nice today so there's some yardwork on the menu.  And peaches need to be picked.  I'm going to have to use a small ladder, since the larger ones are at the top of the tree. 

And, of course, there is always the ubiquitous laundry.  

Yesterday, I signed back up with Rouvy, only for 6 months.  I wasn't about to plunk down $144 for an entire year.  I think that's a lot of buckarinos for an app I may only be using sporadically.  While I'm not cheap or desperately frugal, I do know the value of a dollar.

This year there is going to be something different during the Tour de France.  This will be the first year I don't have a subscription to NBC Sports Gold.  This is not of my own choosing.  Nope.  NBC Sports Gold is now part of the Peacock Network, NBC's streaming service.  In their uninfinite wisdom, NBC has chosen not to partner with Amazon.  They've chose to go with Apple, and as most of you know, I am not an Applehead.  There is a work-around, should I choose to take it.  I can subscribe through my X-box which I believe is rather odd... almost a conundrum.  You see, Microsoft and Apple are competitors in so many markets except for phones.  Strange bedfellows for NBC.

And, as most of you know, I use song lyrics in my books, call it an idiosyncrasy if you like.  Here's the first song to have lines in the next book, The Body in Repose.  It's originally by Little Mix.

And the Southern Baptists voted in a moderate as president!  Now isn't that a surprise?  I'm not going to say there's hope for them, because in the end they're still a conservative hate group bent on taking control of America.

Finally, four months into Biden's administration, the Republicans have chosen not to put their masks back on... you know, the masks they ripped off when Trump got elected.  Selfish, and self-centered, and greedy.  They are the party of no incarnate.  The only way to prove God is not on their side is to vote them out of existence.  2022 is approaching.  This is not the time to sit back and relax.  We need to knock them back so hard, and when they're down, we need to start kicking.  That's the only way they learn.

 

Odd

It's Thursday, my new waffle iron / sandwich maker arrives today.  I'm excited.  Probably more so for the sandwich side of things since I'll now be able to grill them.  Now I can be my own little Panera's at half the cost.

I did finally get my butt on my bike yesterday for a nice ride in Lombardy, the first half of Stage 1 of the ride.  Both stages come to around 50 miles.  Completing that would be an accomplishment.

There was a big spider in the kitchen sink this morning.  Since spiders do more good that bad, I used a broom to help him escape.  That's right.  I saved a spider.  Some of you will think this rather odd, but remember they eat a lot of bad insects... like mosquitoes.

I'm planning spending some of today stripping.  That's right.  Peeling away the nonessential.  While I won't be on a stage, I will be on a ladder.  And what am I going to be stripping away?  This ugly apple border in my hallway.

Why apples?  I wanted something red to go with the yellow walls of the hallway.  It was a mistake, of course.  Apples.  I don't like apples.  The only way I'll eat them is in a pie.  Yeah, I know, I'm a bit odd.

One thing that wasn't odd were the attacks on Harris by the racists on the Right.  You know who I'm talking about, the Idiot Jerk in the White House and Fox News.  I understand Tucker Carlson spent quite a bit of time making fun of her name....  This was coming from a man named Tucker, rhymes with Sucker, you know?  I understand these personal racist and sexist attacks are of great concern to the GOP.  Not because they are racist and sexist, rather his campaign has had how many months to prepare their attacks zeroing in on specific differences for each and everyone of the potential VP selection, and all they could muster in the end were petty sexist and racist attacks.  A thirteen year old child could come up with something better.  But then, this is what we have come to expect from the heart and soul of the Republican Party.  They are predictable.

The Fire, The Fury, The Apples

Well, it's a cold, cold day here in Central PA - wind chills expected to go as low as -30 (F), of course that doesn't mean the wind is going to be blowing all the time, it's not.  In fact, it's so cold I'm beginning to believe that down in Washington hell just might be on the verge freezing over, well, at least for the Republican Party and the Idiot Jerk in the White House.  "Fire and Fury" goes on sale today and the Cyclone Bomb it's bringing are freezing the very blood in the Idiot Jerk's veins - you see, evidently there's enough evidence within those chilling pages to define him as a buffoon... at best.  'Childish' I believe is one of the adjectives used to describe him, and that sounds about right.  I'm torn between whether I should buy this book, or pass on it because I might find it the funniest read I have in a while, but it also might be scarier than the scariest Stephen King.
Oh, and I see Appleheads are putting on their 'woe is me' masks.  Bad chips, you know?  Seems like Intel must have left them in the deep fryer too long and now every Apple product out there can be hacked...  Ooops.  But then my relationship with Apple could best be described as "meh."  I'm too diverse an individual to tattoo myself with one brand name.  There's a Sony smart TV downstairs and Samsung smart TV upstairs, I play games on an Xbox one... and a PC, I do a lot of my writing on a Surface tablet, and the PC I do use is an amalgamation of parts, assembled for me by Cyber Power.  My first smart phone was actually a Garmin Asus, which weighed about 8 ounces.  I've never been one of those people who jump on board the 'trendy train,' who buy something simply because everybody else is buying that product.  There are a lot of people out there who just don't understand that Apple is successful simply because they've managed to turn a large number of people into sheep.

So, I'm off today, though I'm still planning on going to my neighborhood Giant to pick up some yogurt and dog food.  Otherwise it will be a day of naps, laundry, and bike riding (inside of course).

Death of an ipod

So, I went to buy the new Beck album yesterday (Colors) and ran into a bit of a problem.  Amazon Music has always carried everything Itunes carries, and almost always at a more competitive price.  Sure, they don't get the exclusives, like Beyonce's music, but do you really think I'm the kind of person who's going to fork over money for Beyonce?  Nope.  What I've done in the past is buy the music I wanted and then exported it to my ipod.  I did this because for years I owned Hondas that relied upon USB cables rather than Bluetooth.  Well, yesterday morning, while I was syncing my ipod to my computer, I got an error message, number 3504, which said there was something wrong and I would need to restore my ipod.  I had no problem with this, however, when I started to restore I got another error message telling me there was another, bigger issue.  All of sudden this became very complicated.  I don't like complicated.  Simple is better.  Opening files to check on Host issues?  I don't do it.  I just want to plug the damn thing into my computer and have it sync my music, and that was evidently not going to happen.  I did a factory reset on the ipod and got the same error message.  Nada.  Nothing was working. So, I sat at my desk looking at this crappy Apple product which had last all of... a year and a half, and said "shit."
No problem.  I have a Galaxy S8 with a Bluetooth link to my Nissan Rogue and the Amazon Music App is on my phone.  All my music is safe.  All I have to do is open the app and play my music.  Easy peasy.
I did 30 minutes on my trainer this AM.  I'm avoiding the elliptical since it's too much like running and running isn't good for me until the 'issue' gets fixed, and the issue is getting fixed in a little over 3 weeks.
And did the Idiot Jerk in the White House Tweet something stupid yesterday?  I don't think so, but then he went golfing again.  I wonder if the Republicans have realized that they can never, ever point to a Democrat in the White House and complain about vacations, or golfing, for that matter.  This fool takes every weekend off.  I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't jump around the Oval Office every time Friday rolled around singing "it's Friday!  it's Friday! it's Friday."  What a loser.

Ipod number 5

Tonight I get to work the first of two overnights, it will be my 7th day working without a day off and so I'm tending to be be a bit cranky about things.  Like my new Ipod arrived yesterday.  My old one is sitting on a shelf locked up in Ipod hell.  I had the same problem with the first Ipod I bought - it played great for about 2 years and then.... nothing.  It wouldn't play music, wouldn't sync, what it did do was lay there daring me not to throw it out.  I threw it out and got myself a nice new one - lime green.  That one worked well, too, until the Imac it was linked to self-immolated, then, for some reason Apple couldn't explain, I could link it to another computer, but I couldn't add new music.  My 3rd Ipod was stolen.  I left it in my locker at work but didn't lock the lock.  Eight hours later it was gone.  We know who the thief was, he was relaxing in a recliner five feet away from my locker however, because there was no direct proof, nothing charges could be filed.  Interestingly, 2 weeks later he walked off the job.
My 4th Ipod is also daring me not to throw it out.  After about 3 years, it too has stopped working.
Now I'd said I wasn't going to buy another one since I'd like to get more than 3 years service from my purchase.  But then the other night I started looking around on Amazon.
Number 5 arrived yesterday.
It's an Ipod Touch... and it's gold.

And it's filled with software I am never going to use.  Maybe the email, and the weather and possible the clock, but Siri?  Give me a break.  Now, all I have to do is wait and see how long this one lasts.

Manhattan Project for Appleheads

Since this is one of my early morning start days, I've only time for a quick 'piss and moan.'  Yesterday morning I saw that there is now a 'virtual tour' of The Manhattan Project which is being distributed by Los Alamos National Park (that's right, it's a park now).  Anyway, the article was really splashy, how there are virtual bread crumbs to lead you on your way, and I thought this might be interesting.  So, I go to download the app and discover... it's only for IOS.  They must think Appleheads are special.  I own a Galaxy phone and a Pro Surface tablet, no Apple products in this house.
Way back, when I bought my first smartphone, I did some research which included asking the clerk at the store what the differences were between Android and Apple.  Her answer was simple "Iphones are easy to use and are made for people who are less tech savvy."  Not being computer illiterate, I bought a Galaxy.  I see people in the store struggling to unlock their Iphones or to show me pictures of paint can lids and I laugh because these are phones designed for people who have difficulty dealing with technology.

So I sent an email to Los Alamos National Park with a complaint.  If you're going to pay to have an app written, you need to be inclusive, not biased or prejudiced against Android or Microsoft.  Apple's market share has been slowly dropping over recent years. Their popularity is waning.  This is how life goes.

Rotten Apple

There's a lot of chat going on right now about Apple and whether the tech giant should help the FBI.  I can sort of see their side... but we're talking about terrorists here, and the message Apple is sending out to the world, to all terrorist groups is "you're data is safe with us."  Evidently with Apple's new encryption software the FBI has only 10 attempts to crack the code before the phone goes into permanent lock down.  If I were Tim Cook, I'd have done it on the sly, of course he didn't.  And it isn't just terrorist groups that now know their data is safe, hate groups too can now feel secure that their conversations are protected.  When I read this article my inner voice started chanting "this is not good."  Apple's had hundreds of requests for help and has denied every one.  To put this into some perspective, say you and your husband go out to a movie and stop off for a drink on the way back to your car... and say you are attacked by 4 homophobes with baseball bats and they beat the shit out of you... and the only thing left at the scene of the crime are your broken bodies and a battered Iphone.  Apple is not going to help solve this crime.  Nope, absolutely not.

This is just not the right message to send to the world.  If you're bad and you do bad things, you shouldn't be protected by Apple.

The new Green Machine

Well the new PC is here and set up and running.  Moved a bunch of stuff over the the old Dell.  Nothing from the iMac could be saved - that happens when your hard drive goes bad.  Still, because I'd saved a lot of my pics and writings in various places, not a lot was lost.  Well, the music on my iPod is gone.  Bad thing about Apple. they're like Sony and Microsoft and just about everybody who's anybody in Tech.  They want you to be brand specific. and I am anything but that.  Anyway, because my iPod was only authorized on the iMac, I had to deauthorize and then reauthorize it.  All of the music I had not purchased through iTunes and had not stored in the cloud was lost.  Of course, it's not completely gone, it, like so many other things, is store in various other places.

I did some re-arranging in the weight / computer room and the new green machine is sitting on a 70 year old kitchen chair, since I'm not going to sit on it, I figured I might as well use it for something.  The new computer is built to do a lot of things, though it's main purpose is gaming.  As a result, it has two fans you can actually see through the green panels.  In fact, the whole computer lights up green.  Neat, huh? 

The New Computer arrives on Tuesday!

Well, it's Saturday.  I get to close the store tonight.  I get to close tomorrow night, too.  I don't mind closings.  I hate opening the store since it means getting up around 3:30 AM.  On those days, when I get home from work, I pretty much wallow away the hours until it's time to go to bed.

I have ordered another computer to replace the iMac which is not sitting silent up in the attic.  The replacement is a Cyberpower Zeus Mini, green and black.  The only sad thing is that it runs Windows 8.1.  Still, it is fully loaded: massive hard drive, 1 TB of memory and an Nvida 760 video card.

No more Apples for me.

Anyway, it's being delivered on Tuesday, which is great because I'm off work.  The original window for delivery was Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday.  When I told the scheduler at work I might have to take some time off if it got delivered on Monday or Wednesday she kind of fritzed out.  "You're not going to call off are you?" she asked in a bit of a huff.  So close to Christmas, with so many people already taking time off, there are times when I'm the only coverage in the department.  On the other hand, it's not as though customers are lined up to buy paint.

I shrugged her off.  Even though she doesn't want to acknowledge it, her job is going to be changing in 2015.  At some point in time we're going to go to either fully fixed schedules or rotating fixed schedules for all full time associates.  This means she's not going to be able to doodle away 3 days a week under the pretense of writing store schedules.  I have no idea what's going to fill up her hours.  She used to work at the Service Desk, which means she might just end up back there.  Either that, or she'll become the store secretary. 

Anyway, I don't really care.  The new computer comes on Tuesday!  And it's green!  One of my most favorite colors.

Death of an iMac

That's right, my iMac is dying.  One of the pissers about this is that it's only 3 years and 10 months old.  That's rather a short life for a computer.  I spent 2 hours on the phone yesterday with an Apple tech and the conversation pretty much came to an end when he said "you have a serious hardware issue."
The first indicator that there was a problem was when a postage stamp sized page of script attached itself to the tip of the mouse pointer.  I could move the pointer but couldn't click on anything.  So, I called Apple Support.  Kevin was very helpful, however turning the computer on and off using several different combinations of keys failed to change anything.  I managed to access the Apple servers, but only after connecting the computer directly to the modem.  And... I got into Utilities... and the Maverick OS seemed to have disappeared.  That's when he told me a serious crash was taking place.  There was nothing on it that was irreplaceable, so I loaded the Yosemite.  And I still  had the little postage stamp of script hanging from the tip of the mouse pointer.  I thanked Kevin for his help and ended the phone call.  And it turned off the iMac and went downstairs to look for a new upstairs computer (I have a gaming laptop downstairs).  Before I went to bed I turned the iMac back on and, to my surprise, it worked.
This morning I woke up, turned on the iMac and started to reload my bookmarks and got this:

As you can see there are 5 stripes running down the screen, and in the upper left hand corner the mouse pointer with a postage stamp size page of script attached.  And, of course, nothing works.  Well, that's not exactly true.  If you turn it off for about 4 hours it works for a while.  The fan is working, so it's not that.  What ever is going on  is happening in the Hard Drive and it's not a good thing..  I did ask the Tech if he thought I'd been hacked and he said "no, your Hard Drive is going bad."
This was an expensive iMac, and as I said, it's not even 4 years old.  I expected more from Apple.  Were I an Applehead I suppose I would be grief stricken, as it is, I'm chalking it up to an expensive lesson learned.  I guess one bad Apple can ruin the bunch.

Apple Heads and Me

A couple days back Apple had its annual celebration of all things Apple.  I wasn't there, of course, I wasn't invited.  Announcements are usually made at the WWDC, hints of wonderful, new toys coming down the pike.  This year, however, the only really momentous moment seemed to center about the reveal of Yosemite, the new Apple OS.  The Apple Heads went wild.  Everybody else scratched their head because Yosemite is edging towards compatibility with other Operating Systems.  I'm not up with all of the lingo jingo, but apparently now you'll be able to use other, non-Apple keyboards with Apple computers, and some of the changes will replicate services already performed by Android Apps.  This makes me wonder if maybe the Pudding Heads at Apple have realized their future as isolationists is limited; the entire world will not go head over heels for Apple.  This is something Microsoft learned with their Xbox One fiasco, hence the big shake-up rattling through the rafters over at Microsoft.  There will be no Number One but there will be a lot of peaks.

For those of you who don't know, Apple Heads is the collective term I use for all of those individuals who are totally entranced with everything Apple.  They Love It.  From Ipads, to Ipods, to Mac Pros, to Imacs, to you name it, they own it.  This doesn't mean I'm anti-Apple.  I have two Ipods, one syncs and one doesn't however all of the downloaded music on them was not purchased through Itunes, but rather through Amazon.com.  Amazon is less expensive then Itunes.  An Apple Head doesn't care about the price.  

I actually own four computers, six if you count the tablet and the phone, one of which is a very large Imac located up in what my friends call The Compu-Gym-Music room.  I use that computer almost as much as the Samsung gaming laptop down in the down in the dining room.  It's a decent computer even though I hate stacks.  I have a friend who owns everything Apple, he thinks stacks are the greatest.  That's why he's an Apple Head and I'm not.  I don't hold it against him.  He's a very nice guy.  He is the perfect Apple customer.  If they put it on the market, he will buy it.  

Of course this is nothing new, manufacturers have always wanted to build a loyal customer base who would return over and over and over again.  At one point in our electronic history, General Electric was the "go to company."  Radios, televisions, washing machines, power generators at the Hoover Dam, if it ran on electricity it was made by General Electric.  Times have changed.  This year at the WWDC Apple seemed to be signaling to the world that they understand.  Apple Heads will always be Apple Heads, they will change as does the company.  Will they understand what's happening?  Probably not.  If they do, all Apple needs to do is flash a Purple Plaid Iphone in front of their eyes and whisper "look what's new this year."

Mavericks - smoke and mirrors and little substance

As the owner of an IMac, I couldn't wait to download the new OS Mavericks since there are certain thinks I like about Apple's IOs and certain things I don't.  Take stacks for instance, to me they are nothing more then a gimmick, yet I've talked to people who think they're the best thing out there.  This is my biggest gripe with Apple, they put gimmickry above substance.  The new IPhone has the new colors and the fingerprint ID which seems is easily hacked, both are gimmicks to drive Appleheads into ecstasy.  This is why my phone is a Galaxy S4, a little more complicated to use then an IPhone but I least I bought it for what it could do, not for some cutesy little trick.

Anyway, it took a long time to download and a long time to install.  The first thing I learned was that my IPhoto was not only outdated, but the version I had installed was incompatible with the OS.  Mavericks didn't tell me this, I had to discover it on my own.  This meant a trip to the App Store, not such a bad thing, though it did cost time.  Then I received notification that other Apps needed to be updated, including IMovie, which I never use, and it take an additional 15 minutes.  Ho Hum, ho hum, there goes the time.  Finally, around 10:30 this AM all updates and installs were complete and I began my journey through the new Mavericks. 

 

I was not swept away on a wave, especially not a killer one.

 

Email has changed a bit, now it looks very similar to the email I have on my Samsung Galaxy Tab except now I can flag my emails with different colors.  Wow, I thought, nice little gimmick.  Now you can use the ICloud to access all of your information with your other Apple products.  Wait a minute, can't you already do this with Google?  I guess the truly big reveal was that now you can access your information through the ICloud on your ITv.  Appleheads unite!  You can get ITv.  Which is, I suppose, the reason for the free download of Mavericks, Apple's smoke and mirrors ploy to get everybody on the same page.  They must hate people like me who don't see them as gods.

 

 

 

 



The hair up Apple's ass

Let's wait for the next version

Well, the new Iphone is out.  Who cares?  Why the Appleheads around the world.  Who are Appleheads?  Those individuals who live and breathe Apple.  Every time a new product comes onto the market they upgrade simply because it's the newest toy by Apple.  This is a very good reason to question all of the press releases they dump into the media as a form of massive advertising.  At this point they're bragging about having orders for 5 million and there may be problems supply the vast demand.  That's pretty much horse shit.  No company worth it's weight in gold is going to be caught with its pants down when it comes to meeting the demand of their customer base.  Yep, that's right, Apple puts out a lot of Ho Ho Ho.  I think it's funny that this time around they took off Google Maps and installed their own mapping software which just happens to suck.  Basically they shit on their base because they hate the competition.  Now don't read this to mean I hate Apple, I don't, I own an Imac and have my music on 2 Ipods, but I also own a Dell desktop and a Dell laptop.  I use a Samsung Galaxy tablet and a Garmin phone.  Each one fills a need I have.  Too many limit themselves by deciding one product is more holy then the other.      Wrong.  The maps on the Garmin phone are better then those in Google Maps, I know because I used both to go to a Team Depot and found that Google had me wondering around on dirt roads way off from my destination.  What did I do?  Plugged in my Garmin and wow, there was my destination less then a mile away on a well traveled highway.

So why does Apple have this big hair up its ass?  Because they want to own market share.  It's all about domination.  They failed with Apple TV because, well, there is such a better selection out there.  They think they're golden because there has been no Ipad killer.  Unfortunately for them the Ipad has already peaked.  When ever somebody releases a new product they actually lose market share since those customers buying a Kindle Fire or a Galaxy note or even new Nook being released shortly are choosing those products over Apple.  The slow death has already arrived and they're doing everything they can to deny it.