Updating this: A little this and that.....

This past summer, I got back on the old mountain bike again, (actually a new one!) to get some exercise, and I've still got the bike inside the back of the SUV.

And now that the ski season is approaching again, and I'm fighting off "Ski Fever", I gave in on that one last week, deciding that I really do want one more winter on my favorite local hills, with a good digital camera this time, so I can come home with nice pictures.

And all that's costing me is $2,136.00. Why so much? Because I can't drive up to the main lodge, twenty-five minutes up the road, without proper winter tires installed on the vehicle. I didn't want just two snow tires on the driving wheels because nobody recommends that with radial tires like we're all using now. And so I bought a whole new set of four new rims with Goodyear snow tires installed, and new tire pressure sensors for those, and wheel-balancing and then the installation on to the vehicle. Along with that I opted for their storage plan for my summer set of wheels, for an additional hundred dollars plus tax, and so that whole thing came to $1,677.59. The seniors season pass was $250. with tax, and the other $208.89 is for the full season rental of Head skis & boots and liability insurance to cover those in case of loss or damage.

And now, I'm ready for winter 2018/19. All I want now is about 400 cm of base.
So I can't hit the rocks if I fall down acting stupid.... 

Lawrence Martin today in Washington...

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-showdown-between-brett-kavanaugh-and-christine-blasey-ford-is-the/

Your followers numbers drop off if you don't write for weeks....

And nobody's a prophet in his own land, obviously. But I've never had a lot people in Canada reading my stuff. Maybe my computer talk, or my comments on American politics turns them off.  No matter, I'm not aiming this at any one specific tribe or culture or linguistic group. Есть дни, когда я делаю некоторые из них на русском языке. It is a global village, friends.

I came back! ..... Never mind why....Just go with it....

Everyone's still in a fuss over the most bizarre President that America has had in living memory. Or dead memory. Or any memory. The guy's a nut. A nut like the kind that would get you and I quietly salted away in a well-supervised rehab center for the discombobulated. Those divorced from reality as us unwashed masses think of it, whenever we have time.

But as Margaret Wente wrote in her periodic column in the Globe And Mail, yesterday, it's unlikely any recent cataclysms with him in the center may result in his early departure from the tawdry reality show called The White House.  And Margaret should know. She's semi retired now, but for many years was the Managing Editor of that Globe And Mail daily newspaper, billed not entirely pretentiously as 'Canada's National Newspaper', with local bureaus strategically located from coast to coast. It goes without saying she's extremely well connected in the media community. She's a delightful wordsmith, too. When she gets in the mood, ideas fly right at you. I wish I wrote like Margaret. Provocatively, but with a calculated message even her critics can grab in both hands. Margaret says Trump's here until 2020, come hell or high water. Upon reflection, I think she's likely right. She's right more often than wrong, because she knows people who know where the skeletons are buried, and she talks to them often.

Older versions of Windows...

I'm using Windows 8.1 on one computer, and today, in my User's folder, I found a file identified by only its extension, and one that I didn't recognize. It wouldn't open directly, but did open in Notepad. It was written in Chinese. When I tried using Google Translate to read the Chinese, Google couldn't translate it.
I'm assuming it was something that shouldn't be there, so I deleted it, and then changed my password. The file was listed only as .obs32 with no other title.

Short update....

I've just re-visited here after a rather long absence, and I see that Google is making some changes. I'm not sure of the details, but that will come.

For now, I'm mostly aware that my former contacts on here have either died or lost interest in blogging. That may be because we've found better interactions on other sites like Facebook.

So today's "Question Everything" would be "Has blogging lost its relevance in today's world of cyberspace?" My answer to that would most likely be "Yes!". It seems that way from where I'm sitting. And I would like to be wrong about that. I've enjoyed this in the past. But it's not much fun when I don't have others responding or doing their own like in the old days.

That new theme set for Linux....

Here's the image that I used for making the others. The others were colored and manipulated using an old program in Windows, called PhotoStudio 5.5, which dates back to about 2003. It still works like a charm. They did good work.

 

Linux Mint 18.2

Made a new background theme for Linux Mint 18.2, and it will also work in Windows. It's set to change the background once a minute... This has my desktop background changing these pictures in Linux the way Windows Themes changes its backgrounds in Windows. (I love messing around with this stuff...especially when it works!)

Has the world gone crazy?

Sometimes, I think it has.

Looking at the news, there's every reason to wonder about that. Trump has gone nuts in the USA, and Netanyahu has gone nuts in Israel. Kim Jong-un has gone nuts in North Korea. The loonies are taking over.

From today's Globe And Mail paper...

The weekly newsletter from.......

Facebook or not?

Maybe I should start a rumor that blogging isn't dead after all.

Now that we've all heard the stories about Facebook and our personal data, if we think about it, doing a blog wasn't such a bad idea after all. A blog like this is probably more private than Facebook. From all reports, almost anything is more private than Facebook.

Back in the 1990s, when Windows 95 came out, and killed the word processor, everyone thought a bright new future was arriving. We had no idea that it would lead to opening Pandora's Box, and require us to spend time & money in a constant battle to protect our computers from malware, and then try to protect ourselves from those "gold-miners" analyzing everything we write, to sell the useful parts to some other one, who then turns around and tries to hustle us into buying something we don't really want, or don't need, or can't afford.

If we still depended on word processors, and fax machines, our communications would be more secure, and we would have a lot more control over it.  And we would still be able to communicate almost as quickly. 

There's a new browser called Vivaldi and......

And it now has a newer and more improved stable version. You should try it...

Thank You, Fans! Благодарю Тебя, товарищи!

Spring has not sprung yet, but we wish...

Ah, Spring! I can smell it coming...