Fifty Shades of White

2017-01-092017-01-10 Matera the Mad

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.

Menonymous

2016-10-282016-10-28 Matera the Mad

Cheapest quick last-minute Halloween costume evah.

Full Metal Petal

2016-09-102016-09-10 Matera the Mad

Origami Lotus Flower with slight modification

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

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.

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

2016-06-082016-09-04 Matera the Mad

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

2016-05-032016-05-03 Matera the Mad

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

2016-02-272016-05-03 Matera the Mad

Why Your Computer Is Slow–The Real Reasons

(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.

CENSORED

2015-07-232015-07-23

I followed this link from Twitter, enjoyed it immensely, retweeted it, and tried to post it on Facefuck. I was prevented from doing so. FINE! I will share it even more. If you think it is offensive, don’t share it.

3 Dads

I’ve encountered Facecrap’s nannying before, and I will never condone it. Why stop people from posting good things, but allow bullying and bullshit?

Wow I’m So Cool

2015-05-172015-05-17

Yep, changed my site password and forgot to tell WordPress.

Office Clipboard

2015-04-292015-04-29

For years I suffered from stuck clipboard in MS Office 2010, especially when setting up newsletters in Publisher. I finally got off my butt and found out what the problem was.

^#&$@#&%$ Office has its own &%^$^$$ clipboard. Sometimes, when you’ve been doing a lot of copy/paste within the working file, it sticks on the last copied item and won’t paste an item copied from another source.

The solution is to clear the Office clipboard — but they hid it so well that it might as well be an “Easter egg”. I always put my favorite commands, at least those that I don’t know a keyboard command for, on the Quick Access Toolbar. Today, I decided to see if I could do that with the well-hidden clipboard. It was so easy, I’m embarrassed.

Hers’s the skinny for those of you who are ribbon-challenged:

First…

Then, find the damned clipboard, and right-click on the nearly invisible corner-arrow-thingy

Do it!

And there it is

Click your new button to make the clipboard appear and disappear. Click “Clear all” for instant relief of Clipboard Constipation.

These screenshots are from MS Word, but the menu is the same for Publisher or Excel. I’m hoping it’s the same in Office 2013.

There is a keyboard shortcut, but it’s relatively complex. Much as I like using the keyboard, even I find the mouse version of this trick faster.

I’m still flinging out the not-so-rhetorical question: Why the HELL didn’t they make it more obvious in the first place? Why have something that is supposedly useful so well hidden, and with no option to turn the whole bloody thing off, when it can be such a butt-pain?

Quick-n-dirty screenshot series by IrfanView

Thanksgiving 2014

2014-11-272014-11-27

Dinner is cooking, and it smells great. No turkey. No great expectations. No plans for the next artificial emotional pump-up. No one screaming and cursing at the TV, no after-dinner battles to sour the food. It’s quiet, peaceful. Enjoyable.

Not all families are like that, but I know mine wasn’t unique — there are enough divorces and warped personalities. Constantly shattered hope leaves deep scars, whether or not the victim is consciously aware of them. Life can be rotten for children of parents who can’t grow up.

If you can enjoy your holidays as they are, all is well. If not, if all the promises are only lies that smile, something needs to change. I refused to carry on a sickened tradition. I make my own.

Please, save your sympathy for those who have not clawed their way to freedom. I’m having a great day.