Author: matera

A Mystery

matera

I was sitting at my computer (where else), hopping between Twitter and other things. Music suddenly started playing out of nowhere, loud and clear. I went all WTF and looked for the source. With four workspaces, four browsers and a few other windows open…woof. On my way down through my cyberspace mansion, I closed the GIMP because I was done using it, and I didn’t know if something was hiding behind it.

The music stopped. Instantly.

The only reasonable, non-paranoia-inducing explanation is that it was pure co-inky-dink involving a stray radio signal. But that’s one heck of a co-inky-dink, right on the old mouseclick. Plus, the speakers I’m currently using don’t seem to pick up shight like that. The cheapos I used previously often spoke in tiny, tinny voices.

The browsers were all innocent, all still open.

Kind of like that time I was playimg with Windwoes’ voice recognition, forgot I left it running, watched part of a video, and then found a mysterious message inserted into a text file I’d left open. Only no easy explanation, and no evidence (grr, I likes me some evidence).

Oh well, I don’t think it was Russian music :p

Just In Case

matera

…you need something else to call Tronald Gump, here is the list I composed. Some of these may be found elsewhere, but none of them were copied. Not all gems, perhaps, but I wanted a mix of long and short.

Prune Covered In Orange Slime Mold
Decaying Baby-Tooth
Dead Blobfish Dipped In Tang
Thing Moving In A Pile Of Rotting Seaweed
Smelly Sock Found Under A Bed In A Homeless Shelter
Walking Buttworm
Diseased Ho’S Used Tampon
Blazing Juggernaut Of Trivia
Monument To Bad Fuck
Puke Dumpling
Troll Doll Made Of Earwax And Dead Caterpillars
Mass Of Congealed Rancid Lipids
Unfinished Sculpture Of A Turd
Melonball With Bad Hair
Specimen Of Unhealthy Urine
Leprous Tropical Fruit
Horny Banana Slug
Cyanide Pill Disguised As A Kumquat
Babyshit Colored Dingleberry
Overgrown Fetus
Hairy Penis
Slab Of Rancid Pork Belly
Scrofulous Tergiversator
Fear-Biting Soi Dog
Smelly Vaginal Discharge
Oversized Flesh-Eating Bacterium
Yuge Blowfly Larva
Vat Of Putrescent Foreskins
Diseased Puffer Fish
Tiny-Fingered Skankworm
Boil On A Bum’s Arse
Ventriloquist’s Dummy With A Fly In Its Head
Urinal With A Clogged Drain
Imitation Leather Dildo
One-Man Freak Show
Leaky Condom
Highly Overrated Financial Failure
Soiled Codpiece
Insane Parody Of A Demented Ape
Overflowing Toilet
Refugee From Kindergarten
Bale Of Straw With The Face Of A Blobfish
Sow-Humping Sack Of Spoiled Lemons
Poster Child For Mediocrity
Anus-Mouthed Swamp Creature
Rump Of A Naked Chicken
Deserving Target Of Ridicule Since 1946
Overused Diaper
Runaway Honey Wagon
Thing That Fell Out Of A Junkfood Dumpster
Illegitimate Offspring Of A Pardoner And An Ass
Discrepancy In A Virus Scan Report
Comic-Book Villain Wannabe
Talking Sperm Cell
Drooling Idiot Who Can’t Zip His Own Fly
Master Of Gibberish
Party-Crashing Total Bore
Golf-Club With A Dick
Descendant Of Undesirable Immigrants
Nigerian Scam Personified
Spoiled Child With Yuge Entitlement Problems
Half-Ass Attempt At Creating A Sentient Being
Irresponsible Wannabe Penny-Ante Tyrant
Obese Frog In A Puddle Of Piss
Moldy Poundcake
Laxative Overdose
Puppet Of Slimy Rich Pigs
Mass Turd Baiter
Smug Hypocrite With Flaming Depends
Long-Nosed Short-Penised Bullshit Wrangler
Radioactive Citrus Fruit
Stranger To The Truth
Mutant Kumquat In An Expensive Suit
Self-Righteous Ignoramus
Fine Blend Of Pus And Sputum
Significant Source Of Unhealthy Thoughts
Comb Without A Rooster
Ten Gallons Of Low-Grade Sludge In A One-Gallon Pail
Sorry Mook
Yuge Amount Of Artificial Flavor And Color
Elderly Teenager
Tumor With Bad Humor
24-7 Fertilizer Factory
Vast Cloud Of Ignorance
Groper Of Young Models
Misogynistic Misfit With Stinky Fingers
National Disgrace And Embarrassment
Cheese Curd With Evil Intent
Hat Without A Head
Venusian Slime Worm With An Anus On Both Ends
Lost Boomerang

What Would You Call…
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American Imperialism

matera

I was made aware of Steve McEllistrem’s blog post on militarization, Why Are We Militarizing the World?, on Twitter today. He makes a terribly clear statement on matters we are not supposed to think about.

“Good” Americans who mindlessly repeat the Pledge of Allegiance, who want to Make America “Great” “Again,” who don’t see the narcissistic implications of patriotism, have now pushed us all over the edge of the cliff we built. A billion little bricks of arrogance high, it raises bullying above leadership; glorifies and deifies behavior that creates hatred.

It is said that it takes a real man to admit his mistakes. What about a real nation?

The New Holocaust

matera

Guest post by Hallie Dolin
__________________________

Let me tell you a story. It’s violent and it’s not pretty, but it needs to be told.

My paternal grandmother’s mother was from a family called Sereichik, named after their hometown of Sereija in what is now Lithuania. My dad has a sheaf of documents, full of my grandmother’s meticulous research, attesting to the fact that the town was a center of learning. Sereija boasted one of the best yeshivas (Jewish schools for children, almost always boys) in the area. In fact, my great-grandmother earned her passage to America by writing letters for illiterate people, for which she was paid.

Somewhere around forty years after she left, my great-grandmother’s mother Pesse Baile Sereichik, her two daughters who hadn’t managed to get out of the country, and their husbands and children were rounded up over the course of two days in September 1941. They were taken to the edge of town and, by the testimony of surviving townsfolk, were forced to dig their own graves. They were then lined up at the edge of the pits they had dug and shot so that they fell in. Murder and burial in one convenient step.

This is the family of ONE great-grandparent accounted for – an EIGHTH of my ancestry. Every single one of my ancestors, even my maternal grandmother’s American-born parents and her immigrant grandparents, had family back on the continent they were forced into by the Romans and ghettoized within (which is why I go freaking ballistic if you call me white, by the way). They lived in the Ukraine. Poland. Lithuania. Romania. Russia. A scant train car’s ride away from Stutthof, Kaiserwald, Koldichevo, the six extermination camps of Poland. One in six Jews killed in the Holocaust was killed at Auschwitz, and it’s likely that at least some of my family went there.

I’m telling you this story because the people who shot them were not Nazis. The SS didn’t dirty their hands with backwater towns like Sereija. No, my family’s murderers were their own neighbors. Lithuania was one of the bloodiest countries in terms of Jews murdered by their own countrymen. In fact, about ninety-three percent of Lithuania’s 210,000 Jews were killed. Much of this predated the gas chambers. Imagine the sheer hatred, the sociopathy in the upper echelons that goaded these people to foaming rage and let them shoot hundreds of thousands of their own neighbors between the eyes because of their ANCESTRY. Thousands of mass executions in God knows how many unmarked graves.

That is what I’ve seen in these two days of The Orange One taking office, and in the months preceding it. The short story I wrote back in 2008 that explored my fear of what might happen if MCCAIN won doesn’t seem so far-fetched now. The religious right wants much of the country dead. So does any Angry Calvinist businessman who thinks that people who don’t or can’t conform to a fairly recent model of productivity deserve death by no help at all.

Make no mistake, I am not talking just about Black people, Muslim people, immigrants of all stripes, or same-sex-attracted people like my fiancee and me. I’m talking about Jews. I’m talking about being scared as hell that we’re next.

Nearly every pro-Trump gathering that I’ve seen involves that same rage at Jewish people. There is an armed march being planned, specifically against the Jewish people of Whitefish, Montana. Armed march. Does the term “Kristallnacht” ring a bell?

I’m telling you this because we will be among the first to go. Maybe not by Trump and his cronies, who will turn their heads and focus on people who are “less desirable” than us horrible lizard people (yes, I know all the euphemisms that Nazis use). No, Bannon is going to quietly smile as thousands of our neighbors turn against us and reawaken centuries-old racial and ethnic prejudice – yes, I said racial against US, no matter how well some of us pass – to do what they’ve been longing to do for years.

Look me in the eyes, if you know me. Look at my photo, if you don’t. Somewhere in this country is a human being with the fortitude to face me head-on and put a bullet through my brain. I’d even wager that there is more than one.

Help me. Help others like me. FIGHT HIM.

Fifty Shades of White

matera

A Short Tale of Betrayal

I have built a reputation for honest work and trustworthiness. People rely on me to help them recover their passwords, rescue locked email accounts, salvage their lost files, clean up and speed up their computers. Last Friday, I was fired from a job I held for nearly ten years. Seems that my computer skills are no longer needed, and that’s all I was good for. (I have some other thoughts….)

I wanted to clear the office computer of files and software that no one else would know what to do with. I was not allowed to finish the job. This made the computer very unhappy, I am told. I do not feel that this was my fault; my intentions were only to remove things that might be confusing. Had I been allowed to do it completely and systematically, there would have been no trouble. Paranoia born of ignorance can cause more problems than it could possibly prevent.

One thing I left behind was my personal web browser — chock full of cookies! Because of this, I have been forced to change passwords for a forum I visit frequently, Facebluk, Gmail, and anything else I might have checked into. Yes, I should have known better than to stay logged in, lol.

It is well known that firing the hacker can have unpleasant consequences. However, I had no intentions of taking any vengeful action. If the princess who took over management last year thinks otherwise, she is dead wrong. The funniest thing is, her IT pet still hasn’t changed some passwords. [eyeroll] I logged into wordpress as another user and removed my personal login, because I like tidying things up.

I removed myself as admin of their Facebook page (which of course I had created, along with a Twitter account and other good things that I am now locked out of). I also created a new FB page for the organization that previously owned my workplace, because I still help them out.

Life goes on; I made many friends in that job, and they are still my friends. They will still trust me with their computers. As for the princess, I wouldn’t trust her as far as I can throw “Leviathan,” my favorite computer. That’s not far at all, the damn thing is heavy.

Full Metal Petal

matera

Origami Lotus Flower with slight modification
silver lotus

A bit of background first. Twenty-odd years ago I was heavily into origami. Because my health was poor (as a result of poverty) and my low-paying job was exhausting, I needed something to do while mostly doing nothing. Origami was my key to couch occupation.

Since then I’ve forgotten a lot, including some original models that I didn’t bother to diagram. But it’s coming back with a bang. Now that I can afford to buy pre-cut paper, and can order online, I have material to fuel my passion to new heights. So far I haven’t accomplished any noteworthy feats, but my reclaimed skill increases with every fold. And I am diagramming anything that I give a personal twist to. This is about one of those little modifications.

In order to fold a Lotus Flower from three-inch paper, I simplified the method a bit. Skipping one round of corner fold-ins allows me to produce a respectable lotus without straining my not-so-young eyes and fingers.

Here is my diagram, created with Inkscape:
lotus_simplified.pdf

3261c

3263c

3265c

3268c

One thing I found difficult at first was pulling out the main petals. This Youtube video helped me:

Now I often do this step with my eyes closed, the better to feel the movement of the paper. It almost never tears when I don’t watch.

small lotus flowers
More small lotus flowers

Youtube didn’t exist when I first leaned origami; I had nothing but diagrams in books. However I do find videos helpful and recommend them to all beginners.

Happeh Geekness

matera

Not getting too much done on this site, but I set up another for a friend last weekend. Used WordPress, with a theme called Universal. It’s a beautifully tweakable theme that is friendly to all devices. I tested it on a phone just to see how it went.

He’s pegging away at adding content now. Check out the Well Laid Stone (and don’t be surprised if stuff is changing!).

Brickwork 2010

The phoenix rises

matera

My previous web hosting lacked security, and gradually my site became a party zone for script kiddies. Not only littered with unwelcome files, it was impossible to clean up because file permissions had become unchangeable. Support ticket? Forget it.

So, last night I grabbed some recent logfiles and torched the whole thing. Well, scorched it, anyway. Now hosted by A Small Orange, the site can regenerate. It won’t be the same, so if anyone has bookmarked specific pages, those bookmarks will never work again. Heh, sorry, but site happens. The old material will be restored after cleaning, which will take some time.

Slow Computers

matera

Why Your Computer Is Slow–The Real Reasons

PC_tower-melting(A Slightly Tongue-in-Cheek Look at the Fine Art of Maintenance)

1. It was made that way. You wanted cheap, you got cheap. Manufacturers like to sell quantity, not quality, because they can turn over more stock faster. Walmart employees are paid to sell you stuff, not to know a lot. You looked at the price, not the bones and muscle, and you were impressed by the fat — that is, bundled snareware that you thought came along free, and other useless software.

2. It’s burdened with Windows, a notorious resource-hog. Since your cheap box has a puny processor and the barest minimum RAM to run Windows, it naturally horks up if you ask it to chew gum at the same time. It would probably be much happier running Linux.

3. Too much junk is running at startup. Not only all the normal default Windows bloat, but that lovely Norton or McAfee that came with, the other pre-installed junk you don’t use, and the 369 odds and ends that you let your printer (or other peripheral device) disk load on. A new video or sound card can be another great source of bloat. All you need is the drivers, Buddy; the rest of the load is 99% garbage.

4. You never think about maintenance until the poor thing can barely crawl. You’re always in such a hurry that you don’t even shut it down, you hibernate so that it comes back up faster. Then the humonguous hibernation file starts rotting and everything goes to hell. Temporary files? I bet you have 3GB and some of them are starting to smell.

5. On top of all that, you let installers/updaters do what they want. You hunt for popular stuff and download music and movies with Internet Explorer. Then you start trying out every computer tune-up program that comes into sight because your poor computer keeps getting slower because you (go back to the beginning of this paragraph, rinse and repeat).

I have a pet paranoid theory that malware programmers pay computer manufacturers to hobble their products, in order to encourage downloads of rogue cleaners etc.. Go ahead, laugh.

What Can You Do?

1. First, check whether your problem is slow computer or slow internet!
http://computerlearnhow.com/how-to-tell-if-you-have-a-slow-computer-or-slow-internet/

2. Maintenance! Clean regularly. CCleaner (get the “portable” version that you just unZip and run) is a very safe cleaner. Nuke the temp files othen. Clean the Registry once in a while; it’s not a big deal unless you do a lot of installing/uninstalling. Don’t defrag frequently, and when you do, clean first!

3. Get rid of pre-installed junk that you don’t use. Especially if it runs at startup and is always updating itself. Protect your computer with a HOSTS file. Use an ad-blocking browser extension. Do NOT use Internet Explorer. It is the #1 vulnerability of Windows. Firefox has better add-ons anyway.

4. Learn how to find safe downloads, and how to take care of your computer. Use DuckDuckGo instead of Google — you will not be tracked and shown “sponsored” links (ads) related to your searches. Even Google is often better than Yahoo or Bing. A search engine that runs on payola will give you what it’s paid to show first.

5. Don’t be a Software Cat Lady. Don’t run around picking up every new toy whether you need it or not. Research, find out what you really need, what works, what to watch out for. Find out what you can do with what you already have. Don’t just grab at anything that offers to do it all for you with no effort, no learning curve. There ain’t no such thing.

5A. You don’t need screensavers. You don’t need special smilies for your email. You don’t need Facebook games. Nobody needs toolbars or weather spy-bugs or shopping “helpers.” Grow the eff up.

6. Advertising is EVIL! NEVER use any computer speed-up or registry cleaning software that you see advertised anywhere. NEVER click on web-page pop-ups that tell you that your computer needs blah-blah, or is in danger of so-and-so. DO NOT DOWNLOAD from CNET, Tucows, Softpedia, FileHippo, or just about any major big-name download site if you can help it. They all bundle crapware. Sometimes you can find a small text link for a clean download, if you look hard enough. Most often, you will download a downloader which will then try to download a load of garbage and toolbars before it gets you the program you wanted.

If you end up with a crap-bundle-pack, Watch Closely! Quite often they use scary “Cancel” buttons that make you think clicking them will cancel the whole install. So what if it did. Do whatever you have to do to keep the crapware from installing. If it gets away, use JRT (Junkware Removal Tool) and/or Geek Uninstaller  (free version works fine) to get rid of the pests. You might need Malwayrebytes too. Do not let Malwarebytes get away with the premium trial trick, however (yeah, it never ends).

7. There are safe sources. There is good freeware. Most software authors’ sites are fine; just make sure that’s where you really are. LOOK at those search results closely. Some, alas, only redirect to CNET.  MajorGeeks, while not entirely bundleware-free, is at least still HONEST. Read everything before you click. FreewareGuide doesn’t have direct downloads, but tries hard to provide clean links; very few bad ones slip by. Ad-blocking will help anywhere, eliminating dangerous Big Green Download Buttons and flashing click-mes.

As for music and movies, legal downloads are safest but good ad-blocking in a decent browser will take you far…. At least you won’t get hit from so many “drive-bys” if you don’t use IE. Maybe you don’t need to collect so much anyway. Yanno?

8. Befriend honest geeks. Beware friends who think they know it all. And stay away from BestBuy and their often worse-than-useless Geek Squad.

9. Don’t let friends and family use YOUR computer! Especially if, like most lazy users, you run as Administrator. Even if you are careful, they may have sloppy habits, dangerous preferences, and an insatiable need for instant gratification of every desire.

10. Pay for what you use every day. One of the best ways to reward those who devote their time creating wonderful free software is to help them with a donation. It doesn’t have to be a lot — what you can, when you can. If everyone chipped in just a little, there would be less need for ad-blocking. Stay away from Starfucks a while and buy the other guy a coffee.

11. Install Linux. Your computer will breathe a huge sigh of relief. Ubuntu and Mint are extremely easy to use. Forget all you’ve heard about having to use esoteric commands; it’s all menus and eye-cons these days. And it’s all free! You won’t need to search out in the jungle for extras; you can get almost anything you want through your operating system’s own software channels. If you do need some Windows software, you will probably be able to install and run it with little more effort than in Windows.

Besides, then you can have a lol on the scummy scam callers who claim to be from Microsoft and tell you that your computer is “generating a lot of suspicious activity” or has been reported to be infected blah blah. Before I hang up in disgust, I tell’m, “I’m a hacker, I run Linux!” Doesn’t do much good for the machine calls, but the live ones — often rather amateurish — can be embarrassed.