Christmas Greetings

Some Christmas music...

Letter to Santa

A little music...

If you read Google News....

If you are reading articles on Google's News App, you need to know that some of those are not checked by the editors of the page hosting the article. You may see a small warning that says they haven't checked the content, which is obtained from sites that they contract with.

I'm mentioning this not because I have any problem or beef with Google, but to warn you that some of those sites-within-sites contain infections of malware. Just last evening, reading one article in Google News, both Bitdefender and Malwarebytes Premium blocked pages on it, and offered to "get me out of here". I took their advice, because (1.) I'm paying for it, and (2.) Both of these security programs are top-rated and do good work. And yes, you can run more than one without conflicts these days. Most security programs now are designed to work along with others for your added protection. I use three different ones. Because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

In addition to those mentioned above, if you want one that's very good at rooting out adware cookies, sometimes by the dozens, you should get a program called SuperAntiSpyware. There's a freebie version, and a Professional with added features. I have the professional one, with added tools for other useful jobs. And I have never depended on Microsoft's 'Windows Defender' because it doesn't. If you want really effective security, you have to buy it from people who do nothing else.

Winter comes closer

Autumn leaves

Another nice sunset

7:30 p.m., October 1st, 2017.

A little more music...

A little music....

Watch the little guy in the striped hoodie...

One thing I don't like about Windows 10

It picks up a couple of dozen or more 'cookies' (spyware) every time I start it. And if you haven't got a program designed to find those, you will soon have hundreds. To prove that, I purposely did not use this 'cookie-hunter' for several days, and when I finally did, it found 438 of these cookies in the system. And that is totally unacceptable.

 

A couple of today's pictures...

Today's The Moscow Times

No one is a prophet in their own land...

Today's 'top ten'....

Today's desktop background...

A few pictures of flowers around here...

These are some of the flowers around our grounds this summer.

Yes, I'm still here somewhere...

This is my oldest computer, from about ten years ago. A quad-core Acer that just keeps going, like that Energizer Bunny in the TV ads. It has sat idle for nearly a year, and a week or two ago, I decided to fire it up, and install Linux Mint 18.2 Sonya, and see how it goes. It goes very well, thanks.

One of the many charms of Linux is that it happily runs on older hardware like this, and gives you the feeling that you're right up on the cutting edge of technology - because you are. The folks building Linux do with programming what others have to do with expensive new hardware. I like that. A lot.

I like Linux so much, I recently dumped the Windows 10 Insiders Preview from my Predator G6-710, and installed Linux Mint 18.2 Sonya in its place on the Optical Drive. It also has Linux Mint 18.1 Serena on an external Seagate hard-drive, dual-booting with the other, and sharing the one TB data drive for filing.

Viewers: Top Ten for 07-26-2017

I see from the above that I've still got at least 7 viewers in Ireland, probably among my mother's people, the Rays. I've always thought of Mom's side of the house as being "the keepers" and the other side, Dad's, as being "those others".

And it's nice to see I'm still being checked on by our viewers in Russia.....
Повесьте там, Дети, Родина снова восстанут! И всем вам, работая над Linux Mint, могу сказать, что версия 18.2 замечательна, и большое спасибо за отличную работу!

Sunset, July 26th,2017

We don't get nice sunsets without a few clouds. (Philosophy 101 ?)

I am more popular when I am not doing this!

Enjoy your day, Everyone! (And look for me on Facebook as Ray Sutton.)
And as you may know, Facebook is absolutely habit-forming! Woof!

Things are growing at last....

Is this a sunset, or what?

Still here, Kiddies.....

I haven't been very active on here lately, but I'm far from dead.  How far? Oh, about this [>>>>>>>>>] far. Any questions?

So where have I been then? Probably, on Facebook... the thinking man's vacation from reality. You can find me there, as "Ray Sutton". Check it out. And once again, I am NOT dead yet! Not from the ass in either direction.... and speaking of asses, how about that American President, huh? - Woof!!! If that ignorant son-of-a-bitch had one more brain cell, it would declare bankruptcy!
Enjoy your day, everyone.... (It's later than we think, I betcha!)

The Moon last evening....

Clouds.....

Are personal blogs old news? I seriously wonder....

Maybe bloggers are just moving on to newer things, like Facebook, or that other thing, for the thumb-typers who must share every half-assed thought - like the semi-famous Donald Trump. Thirty-five psychiatrists can't be wrong; the guy's a complete mental basket case.... He's doing more to destroy America than the rest of the world combined.

A short music break....

I was tempted to put this one onto Facebook the other day as a comment under another entry, but thought better of it. Here, the rules are not the same....

 

I came back....... temporarily.....from Facebook.

This began life as a picture in a flier inside today's morning paper, and I wondered what it might look like as a desktop background. So I made it into one. I'm surprised it looks so nice on a 30-inch (76 cm) monitor.

Facebook today is making a fuss about Trump meeting the King of Saudi Arabia, and receiving a medal from him. I wonder what The Moscow Times is saying today....?

Not much about Trump on the first page...... I wonder if there is any inside?

Where have I seen this kind of thinking before? Is the Russian Federation now copying from our American neighbors? I doubt if most Americans, stopped on the streets and asked, could tell you what the Duma is. Many of them can't understand their own Constitution, never mind anyone else's. Russia and America might as well be friends. It is a lot less expensive than the alternatives, and the smart ones know this already.

 Для моих русских читателей - как вы теперь знаете, я все еще жив и здоров и отсутствие записей здесь не является результатом моей смерти.
Благодарим вас за постоянный интерес.

More 'This and That' ....

I've been neglecting this blog for a while, because I've been too carried away with Facebook. I got on it before that disastrous election in the USA, and it got habit-forming. I've met some great people on there, but I've also met my share of the "under-educated"... the ones who elected Boy Wonder Donald. And Boy, do we Wonder about him!

On FB this morning, the subject of Germany came up, and I did three versions of a desktop background of the Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria....

This is the castle that inspired Disney to create theirs, and this is proof that you don't get a second chance to make a first impression.

Moving along here, I'm beginning to wonder if anyone can get Donald Trump under control. He seems to be pitifully lacking in the usual knowledge of our world and its countries, and their locations, and how to deal with them. As I mentioned on Facebook the other day, it's a mystery how anyone with his advantages could so successfully avoid a basic education. But as someone on there explained, he simply hires the brains he needs, so that he doesn't have to use any of his own. And that's good for him, because in a battle of wits, he would be at a definite disadvantage. Money might buy someone's brains, but it certainly doesn't by manners, morals, integrity, or self-control. We've seen the proof already. 

Backgrounds....

A little music break...

How to reset the numbering of screenshots in Win-10

In Windows 10...( a short tutorial)
If your Screenshots folder gets full of stuff you don't want, and you've dumped it, but you'd like to reset the counter for their numbers, here's how....
Let's begin by making a shortcut to the Registry Editor like this:-
right-click an empty spot on your desktop, and in the little menu, choose "New" and then choose "shortcut". When the new window for this opens, in that blank line type in %windir%\system32\regedt32.exe and then down below, click on Next. Erase whatever is in that name line, and call it Registry Edit. Click Finish, you're done. If you like, (and I did this) right-click your new shortcut, and then choose Pin to Taskbar. Now, we're ready to get into Registry. And be careful here, because boo-boos can mean disaster.

Use you new shortcut to open the Registry Editor. Now in the left-hand pane, navigate to ->
HKey Current User>Software>Microsoft>Windows>Current Version>Explorer. Click that word Explorer to show you the list in the right-hand (actions) pane, and look for the Dword named ScreenshotIndex. Right-click that, and from the menu, choose the top item, Modify. When you click that, you get another little window which will show you a Value, usually highlighted in blue. Erase that value already there, and replace it with 01 to start the counting all over again from one. Click OK, and you're done. You can close Registry Editor. Here's a couple of screenshots to help you....

Busy lately with computer, and setting up Linux Mint 18.1

I was trying to install Linux Mint on the optical drive, and having trouble, until learning that there are settings that have to be changed in the Bios/UEFI to get it all happening. You need the settings changed to turn off Secure Boot, and set things for Legacy so that Linux can get access to it all. And when you're done, it looks something like this.....

Windows Update in Build 15031 Insider Preview....

Attention, fellow Windows Insiders!

If you're finding that Build 15031 seems to be hung with its Windows Update stuck on "initializing updates" forever, here's the cure:-

Go into Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Services. Scroll down to Windows Update. Right-click that line, and choose Properties from the little menu. Look to make sure that it is set to Automatic. Mine wasn't. It was set on Manual, but it should be in Automatic. Stop the service, change it into Automatic, and then restart the service. Click Apply and then OK, and you're done. Your new Build 15046 should download OK. Mine did. I'm using it here.

Love Is Gone - Live in Montreux 2009

Peter Cincotti Live - Witch's brew - Tindari 31/07/2011

Peter Cincotti - St. Louis Blues

peter cincotti - i love paris

Ain't Misbehavin' - Peter Cincotti

peter cincotti - st louis woman

Donald Trump and cyber-security: a lax attitude.

I'm reprinting this from a posting I did on Facebook...

  Perhaps a lax attitude because he doesn't know diddly about computers.
His field of expertise is bullshit. Hot, steaming, and from an alternate reality totally unfamiliar to those of us in the real world.

And I have terrible news for him if he thinks that all he has to do is appoint a skillful mouthpiece to browbeat the media into submission and then he can control everything we know about his government. I've said this before, but please let me repeat: everyone with a computer is both a consumer of news and a broadcaster of news. The social media like Facebook may well be our savior from the likes of a wannabe dictator like Trump, because we can spread the facts just as fast as he can spread the bullshit. So his plan for world domination may not get beyond the fantasy stage. Maybe he should have done his homework. This really isn't the 1930s when things were different.

Trump and 'Managed News'

Recently, it was pointed out that Trump would like to have the major news outlets conform to his altered views of reality, very similar to what Hitler did in Germany in the 1930s. However, as Margaret Wente of the Toronto Globe and Mail points out, this is not 1939.

At the risk of 'jumping to conclusions' I'm guessing Margaret means that our world and its communications are much different now. It will be virtually impossible for the Trump administration to control news outlets, because everyone with a computer is both a consumer and a broadcaster of whatever's going around, and this is not limited to only the USA. In minutes, I can communicate to my friend in Beirut, or another in northern England, or another in central Germany, and between us, we can tell the world what's happening and our opinions of it. We've already proven that this works. And on my blog, I have readers from almost anywhere on the globe, including hundreds in Russia, some in China, and others in Europe, and Australia. It would not be easy to limit the news to only one preferred story-line. If Trump thinks he can, then he isn't aware of the capabilities of computers and the Internet.

And we haven't even mentioned those hackers, who could not only interfere with all that, but could even plant programs on Trumpers' computers that could virtually wreck them. If I were Trump, I'd familiarize myself with the possibilities, before I provoked an angry response from the world's computer users. And why am I explaining how he could avoid disaster? The sooner that hit him the better. He thinks he's smart. Let's find out.

A short break in our snowy weather lately

Windows Insiders Questionnaire

Today, I filled out a rather lengthy questionnaire about my membership in the Microsoft Windows Insiders, a group of volunteers who test unreleased versions of Windows. It was a bit on the long side, and some of it didn't apply to me very well. 

When asked if I mention it anywhere else, I mentioned this blog. I didn't think to add that to see most of that, one would have to go back to about 2014, and work forward from there. I've said a lot about Windows on here, but not so much lately as in the beginning of the Windows 10 testing, during those heady days when we were discovering the usual teething problems characteristic of any new operating system.

While Windows 10 is built on the same basic chassis (kernel) as Windows 7, it does have a lot of background items running busily behind the scenes, to make the stuff we see work more smoothly or more comprehensively, and those also use quite a lot of resources, so you should have a computer with some respectable 'horsepower' under the hood, so to speak. At the same time, and for those unfamiliar with it, Windows 10 does run older programs much more readily than some previous operating systems. That's very useful if you tend to cling to favorite older graphics editing programs, or perhaps something from the corporate environment you'd rather not replace just yet. You may get a notice that it isn't compatible, but if you select "run anyway", it likely will run OK.

And Windows 10 is improving. All of us Insiders sending in our Feedback and suggestions is helping to encourage useful changes. Two heads really are better than one. As I said in a rant to Microsoft in 2009, maybe us unwashed masses can't do code like you do, but we do know what we like, and what we'd like to have, and what's bugging us about what we've got now, and that information should be useful in designing a better Windows. And it was. I was right. And if little Sally is still there, and still reading this stuff, a warm hug to you!

Beginning the Year of The Rooster...

Spring is just around the corner

Something I put on Facebook today...

Old-Fashioned, that's me....
I just re-subscribed to my once-upon-a-time regular daily paper, The Globe and Mail, because I miss Margaret Wente's columns, and a daily paper. I'm old-fashioned. I like my milk in glass bottles and my newspaper at the door when I wake up in the morning. I like to start my day reading things like this.......
"Why are we so irrational about Donald Trump? Well, we’re tribal, and we’ve decided he is Moloch. (By “we,” I mean the usual left-liberal-academic-media-urban professional crowd who don’t own pickup trucks.) Also, we have no sense of perspective. Most of us who live in North America have no idea what bad leaders or bad times are truly like. We don’t know any history, either."

That's an excerpt from Margaret's latest column, and a small sample of why she's an award-winning columnist. As the former comedian Fred Allen once might have said, "The way she writes makes me want to put my quill back in my goose."

Today's Wallpaper...

Smoke and mirrors.....

Please Note:
The following is reprinted from a posting by Pam Spears-Bradford on her Facebook page today, with my thanks to Pam for her generous permission.

Meanwhile, while you were watching football and the Golden Globes ... this is not politics-as-usual:
It is critical that we become aware of exactly what is happening while the President-elect trash talks an actress on Twitter to distract coverage.
The federal week in review:
1. Trump fires all Ambassadors and Special Envoys, ordering them out by inauguration day.
2. House brings back the Holman rule allowing them to reduce an individual civil service, SES positions, or political appointee's salary to $1, effectively firing them by amendment to any piece of legislation. We now know why they wanted names and positions of people in Energy and State.
3. Senate schedules 6 simultaneous hearings on cabinet nominees and triple-books those hearings with Trump's first press conference in months and an ACA budget vote, effectively preventing any concentrated coverage or protest.
4. House GOP expressly forbids the Congressional Budget Office from reporting or tracking ANY costs related to the repeal of the ACA.
5. Trump continues to throw the intelligence community under the bus to protect Putin, despite the growing mountain of evidence that the Russians deliberately interfered in our election.
6. Trump breaks a central campaign promise to make Mexico pay for the wall by asking Congress (in other words, us, the taxpayers) to pay for it.
7. Trump threatens Toyota over a new plant that was never coming to the US nor will take jobs out of the US.
8. House passes the REINS act, giving them veto power over any rules enacted by any federal agency or department--for example, FDA or EPA bans a drug or pesticide, Congress can overrule based on lobbyists not science. Don't like that endangered species designation, Congress kills it.
We - progressive, liberal, libertarian and conservative - need to all wake up to what is actually happening to our beloved country.
COPY AND PASTE this entire post into your own status update instead of sharing. More of your friends will see it. - Mike McGee.

Today's Top Ten.....

Несколько недель назад там были тысячи из вас, читающих здесь. Нужно ли мне сказать больше шуток?

U.S. Politics: The uproar continues...

Now that the retrospective weeping & wailing & gnashing of teeth is in full swing, today's Question Everything is:-

Why didn't those Righteous Republicans and their God-fearing or God-damned pals do a better job of checking the background of Herr Drumpf and his unsavory dealings with mobsters both foreign and domestic, before embracing him as a candidate for President? Wasn't that a dereliction of duty on their part? Or did they not give a damn if the Russians owned the President and the White House, just as long as Hillary didn't? Are they all traitors, or just some of them? How many are Russian 'moles' planted here for just such a purpose by an enemy who believes in planning ahead? Years ago, Nikita Khrushchev said that they wouldn't have to fight you, because you would be destroyed from within. Looks like he was right.

Today's viewers are from.....

Trump and his Russian connections....

Shared from a post about Trump and Russia .Here are some facts : Decide for yourselves 1) Trump owes Blackstone/ Bayrock group $560 million dollars (one of his largest debtors and the primary reason he won't reveal his tax returns)
2) Blackstone is owned wholly by Russian billionaires, who owe their position to Putin and have made billions from their work with the Russian government.
3) Other companies that have borrowed from Blackstone have claimed that owing money to them is like owing to the Russian mob and while you owe them, they own you for many favors.
4) The Russian economy is badly faltering under the weight of its over-dependence on raw materials which as you know have plummeted in the last 2 years leaving the Russian economy scrambling to pay its debts.
5) Russia has an impetus to influence our election to ensure the per barrel oil prices are above $65 ( they are currently hovering around $50)
6) Russia can't affordably get at 80% of its oil reserves and reduce its per barrel cost to compete with America at $45 or Saudi Arabia at $39. With Iranian sanctions being lifted Russia will find another inexpensive competitor increasing production and pushing Russia further down the list of suppliers.
As for Iranian sanctions, the 6 countries lifting them allowing Iran to collect on the billions it is owed for pumping oil but not being paid for it. These billions Iran can only get if the Iranian nuclear deal is signed. Trump spoke of ending the deals which would cause oil sales sanctions to be reimposed, which would make Russian oil more competitive.
7) Rex Tillerson (Trump's pick for Secretary of State) is the head of ExxonMobil, which is in possession of patented technology that could help Putin extract 45% more oil at a significant cost savings to Russia, helping Putin put money in the Russian coffers to help reconstitute its military and finally afford to mass produce the new and improved systems that it had invented before the Russian economy had slowed so much.
8) Putin cannot get access to these new cost saving technologies OR outside oil field development money, due to US sanctions on Russia, because of its involvement in Ukrainian civil war.
9) Look for Trump to end sanctions on Russia and to back out of the Iranian nuclear deal, to help Russia rebuild its economy, strengthen Putin and make Tillerson and Trump even richer, thus allowing Trump to satisfy his creditors at Blackstone.
10) With Trump's fabricated hatred of NATO and the U.N., the Russian military reconstituted, the threat to the Baltic states is real. Russia retaking their access to the Baltic Sea from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and threatening the shipping of millions of cubic feet of natural gas to lower Europe from Scandinavia, allowing Russia to make a good case for its oil and gas being piped into eastern Europe.

Sources: Time Magazine, NY Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian UK.

And here we are, in 2017.....

I've once again received my Christmas present, the 2nd of January, and the hullaballoo of Winter Solstice, Christmas, and New Year's is almost over. I say 'almost' because in parts of the world like Russia, this evening is Christmas Eve, and tomorrow, Saturday, January 7th, is Orthodox Christmas Day.

And so, to my readers in Russia,  возможно, я желаю вам счастливого Рождества!

That American election is now history, but the 'fallout' is still coming down.  And it probably serves them right. Only a little more than one-third of them even cared enough to actually vote, but the howls of anguish since would make you think everyone plus their relatives in foreign countries had voted at least once, and possibly more! They couldn't get off the sofa to go to vote, but they can raise a deafening uproar now that their favorite didn't make it.

And those who voted for Trump are soon going to be howling in anguish themselves, when they discover that he's not the sweet lovable guy they thought he was, from his TV work and other businesses. Most people would be smart enough to realize that a billionaire isn't the kind of guy who usually gives a damn about the 'Joe Lunchbuckets' of the world. But they were charmed out of their senses by that constant bellowing bullshit and before they knew it, he had them where he wanted them. 

I found all that a little too reminiscent of the bombastic bullshit of Adolf Hitler, and I hope for everyone's sake that Trump isn't copying Der Fuhrer. The world had enough of that the first time around. But there are enough similarities in the two personalities to make most people very nervous. And learning that Trump has been reading some of Hitler's old writings does not help. I think a lot of people will wish they never heard of that son of a bitch before he's gone.