What’s All This Then!

What happens when you design four buildings in the shape of an L and then arrange their bases to point at each other? In the age of political correctness, you have created a structure that runs the risk of offending someone who views this arrangement on Google Earth.

As children, we would ‘see’ monsters in cloud formations. But we knew enough to realize that it was our fears and imagination at work. Clouds are just clouds. Someone can look at this picture of Navy barracks and purposefully project an evil symbol of Nazism upon those buildings — buildings that aren’t even connected in the middle. The more enlightened among us could find an ancient religious symbol of well-being. But this isn’t about enlightenment. This is about $600,000 additional tax dollars that the Navy is going to spend to make sure the less-enlightened aren’t offended.

Our begrudging brethren wouldn’t have known about this structure by simply walking around it. As usual, it only took a few people who enjoy making problems where none really exist. So now, instead of buying battle armor to protect our troops, *we* get to spend money to protect the sensibilities of a disturbed few…

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You’ve probably heard about how various governments have taken to censoring the Internet. It’s not that the Chinese or North Korean powers-that-be are worried about their jobs. Nah, can’t be that. Why, they are just so concerned over their citizens well being that such measures are necessary. … ya, ok then …

But it’s not all bad. A trio in England decided to take those Internet censoring techniques and create a website, surfprotected.com, that lets YOU surf the Web safer than ever. From their site:

Surf Protected enables you to surf safely avoiding the dangers of internet viruses and harmful programs such as Spyware that could seriously damage the operation of your computer. The site achieves this by allowing you to surf the web anonymously, retaining your IP address from the sites that you wish to visit giving you back your right to privacy and aiding against identity theft. By retaining your IP address, the site can prevent irritating pop-ups and marketing programs on your computer giving you the freedom to surf undisturbed. Surf Protected can allow you to access sites that are blocked by internet filters unnecessarily, empowering you once more with your rights to surf freely and unhindered. Surf Protected will, however, work with the Internet Watch Foundation to ensure that this liberty is not abused. Your safety online is of the highest importance to us

There is probably some ancient saying about using the weapons of your enemies for the greater good. (I could come up with one but I’m not that ancient.) And it looks as though these Manchester lads have come up with a great use of oppressive Chinese technology. I will let you know how well their site works for me, the instigator and renegade libertine that I am.

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An amazing technological breakthrough has been announced by the University of Bristol in England! I predict that this will revolutionize the world! Is it a cure for cancer, a car that runs on air, teenagers that do their chores without complaining? No, something even better — nonstick gum! When this was announced, you could hear the collective sighs of relief from theater workers who scrapped gum from under chairs and off the floor, from restaurant workers who tackle the undersides of tables, and from children with bald patches where gummy hair once resided before being hacked away by their frustrated mothers. Next to the inventions of the wheel and fire, this truly is a great day for humankind!

I wonder how the flavor is going to stick to this new gum … not that it does to regular gum now.

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My daughter stepped out of her trailer, stood beside me and said with a chuckle, “That’s amazing, Dad. I can’t believe you did that.” What?! I just applied my usual “adopt, adapt and improve” thinking to our situation and make everybody happy in the process.

I had traveled to Georgia to see my children who are in their late teens and early 20s. They live out in the county in a cramped single wide trailer. Just before I began my trip to see them, I discovered that they had recently lost electricity to one side of the trailer. Even though my children are renting the trailer from my ex brother-in-law, he has been “too busy” to fix anything at the moment. So to keep cool at night, my children had been sleeping in the living room with a fan in a window. Once I learned about this, I had hoped to get nice, air-conditioned motel rooms for us all. Unfortunately, all the rooms within a 50 mile radius were booked due to some local must-see tractor pull and buggy race. (Apparently it doesn’t take much to amuse Georgians in that neck of the woods.) But I wasn’t about to put off my trip because there was no room at the inns or in the trailer. Besides, I had my children’s birthday presents so I know they wanted me to show up.

My solution was easy. At night, I would transform my car into a camper. That’s right! Faster than you can say “Optimus Prime”, my 2001 Hyundai Tiburon sports car would become a luxury camper. You might think that this would be an impossible feat. But most people in Georgia speak slow enough that I could convert my car before they even get to saying “… Prime.” As for the vehicle conversion itself, well, it might be difficult for some. But not for A.A.I man(adapt, adopt and improve)!

The first issue is to keep cool while sleeping in a warm summer night. No problem. I just rolled down both windows, opened the hatch back and let nature’s night breeze become my air conditioning. Problem solved … almost. It’s funny how one solution will create another set of problems. In this case, there was the issue of mosquitoes, other flying insects and creepy crawly critters of the night. Again, the easy solution was to find mosquito netting. When all I could find was netting designed to fit over a cot, I simply bought two packages. One fit over the hatchback and draped to form a good seal along the body of the car. The second netting went over the roof of the car and covered the window openings. Lucky for me, it was wide enough to trap it using both the passenger and driver doors. So far so good. A third unexpected issue were the millions of biting ants that swarmed on the parched ground in the yard looking for water and flesh to nibble on. I bought a can of ant insecticide, sprayed the 12×15 foot patch of ground, covered that with a tarp, sprayed the tarp and then parked my car on top of it.

Now that I’ve taken care of the unwelcome guests, what about the most important guest — me? How comfortable could I sleep in a bucket seat? Not very well, I can assure you. I had a foam camping mat but how was it going to into the car? Hmmmm… When I laid the backs of the rear seats down, I had a platform that was only a little more than 5 feet from the back of the car to the front. I could let my feet dangle. Nah. There had to be a better way. All I needed was an extension. A little looking and I realized that I could put my 14 inch wide suitcase behind the passenger side seat. The camping mat then covered from the back of a car and laid with the front end over my suitcase. With inches to spare on my bed, I added a pillow and a blanket and hotel Ron was in business. Some room service would have been nice but my accommodations worked well. There’s nothing like laying there, looking up through the hatch back window and the netting and seeing millions of stars as a cool breeze soothes you gently to sleep … while the bellowing of untipped cows, the spastic barking of over-anxious dogs, and the sporadic crowing from an insomniac rooster all worked to have you enjoy the night with them. No doubt they were all paid by the motel industry to discourage the joys of camping. No problem though. I brought ear plugs.

There’s more to this little adventure but I think I’ve told you enough for now. Here’s a picture that my daughter snapped with her phone. I promise you that it is much more comfortable than her camera made it look like.

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In my 20 years of dealing with computers, the most important commandment that is repeatedly broken is “Thou shalt maintain a backup of your data!” So when was the last time that you backed up your data? These days, there is no reason not to, especially with free online backup services such as IDrive-E. They allow you to save up to 2 GB for free (and more for a small fee).

What caught my attention about this company is that they won’t delete your data even if you have removed it from your computer. There is nothing worse than erasing a file only to find that you need it several months later. IDrive-E also keeps up to 30 versions of your backed up files. This is very handy if you make a lot of changes to your files and need to go back to older revisions. I also like the fact that they will back up your system in an encrypted format (so that no one else can read your data) every 10 minutes as opposed to 24 hours with most other companies.

So if you are looking for a way to protect all that hard work that resides on your hard drives, I would recommend checking out IDrive-E.

this post is sponsored in part by IDrive.com

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I’ve seen lots of different techniques to try and control those drivers smitten with a need-to-speed. Lately, I’ve noticed several vacant cop cars parked on traffic island and off the side of the road to scare us into checking our odometers. But the best solution that I’ve learned about is Denmark’s use of topless women holding speed limits signs. Gotta love those, Danes! You certainly won’t find this effective technique here in the States. We’re trying to prevent accidents, not cause them.

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How dependent have you become upon technology? As I cut costs a few years ago, I got rid of my land-link long distance service. Do you really need to pay for all the extra fees they tack on: long distance connection charges for flipping a switch at the main office, phone charity charges for rural folks who use tin cans, regulatory fees to pay regulators to come up with more outlandish fees to justify their jobs. You know, things that the phone companies say add value to your call but don’t really. So I began using Skype on my sister’s laptop that I fixed. It quickly became my main link to everyone important to me.

But this laptop has several issues. While I was able to fix the software issues, the hardward ones — the ones that cost more than the laptop itself — are beginning to make themselves known. At first, they hid themselves well. Kind of like, turning on your car radio and having your air conditioning kick off every time. Eventually, a good mechanic will fix the A/C. A great mechanic will do so without replacing the radio on/off switch, the radio wiring, the speakers and the radio itself.

So when my Internet calls began messing up a few months ago, I blamed the new version of Skype and began tweaking everything in XP that I could. Sure, I was able to get great improvements in my voice-over-the-internet service. But even those improvements didn’t last long. After a few minutes of conversation, the echoing would start, parts of the conversation would begin to repeat like a frantic rapper with a record on a bitchin’ turntable, and long seconds of static would interrupt during the most important parts of the call.

But I’m not completely incompetent. I’ve been working with electronics and computers and software long enough to learn a few things. (For example, I don’t stick screw drivers or my tongue into wall sockets any more.) A laptop is simply a collection of transistors and other electronic goodies. With a good troubleshooting method, it is a million times easier to figure out what is wrong than say something as complicated as … a woman. With that in mind, I proceeded to troubleshoot with chocolate and flowers. Several weeks later without so much as a thank-you from my laptop, I contemplated turning it into a Frisbee. It was then that I realized the wisdom behind “using the right tools for the job” and promptly installed a temperature monitoring program. Ta-Da! There was the problem. As the laptop got hot (and not because I was enticing it with flowers, poetry and promises of diamonds), the main chip inside would jump to 100% of its capabilities. Sort of like a 400 pound person fanning themselves in the middle of summer. Pretty soon, they can’t do anything else but fan themselves furiously. Everything else has to waiting. So it was with my computer. It was all it could do to take care of itself and the demands of Skype.

Unfortunately, it would cost more to get new board and chips than a new laptop. My solution? A frozen gel icepack. I placed it under my laptop’s fan port and battery pack with enough space for air to circulate. That dropped the temperature by ten degrees F! (“F” for Fahrenheit, although this result did cause me to think “F’ing cool!”) My latest Skype calls went much better as long as the gel pack remained frozen. But this solution is what we in the industry call “a patch”, not a fix … unless you’re paying for it. Then it’s “I don’t know why it broke again. Looks like you have something else wrong now. Let me give you an estimate for that.”

So wish me luck as I call and write and refrain from throwing this piece of sh…shaped plastic across the room. Maybe Santa will be good to me this year. Or not. Maybe this was a bad time to convert from Christianity…

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