The clean-up crew

One of Avast's new features...

New version of Avast today...

Prostate Exams: The Fickle Finger of Fate...

Seriously... it isn't going to change your sexual orientation, if for no other reason than the fact that by the time you need it, your sex life is probably mostly a memory anyway. And suppose the urologist finds a lump or a rough spot on the prostate? Your next procedure is likely going to be a biopsy, and that's a mechanized version of a prostate exam that's repeated between six and eight times, to collect a range of samples for testing at the lab. The device that takes the samples makes an ominous clicking sound as it takes a tiny nip out of the target area each time, but it's relatively painless, because there aren't a lot of active nerves in that region, Thank God!

Let's say the lab examines your samples, and reports that they found evidence of cancerous growth in the prostate. Your PSA level (Prostate Specific Antigen)
at this point will be above normal. So before your urologist gives you the old razzle-dazzle about the 'Watch and Wait' (do nothing routine), and before your PSA level climbs past 18 or 20, (the upper limit for doing a brachytherapy procedure) ask him to refer you to the Cancer Society "for a second opinion", and when you get there, ask if you can qualify for their Brachytherapy procedure. If you meet the requirements, it only takes about 45 minutes for the actual procedure, you're 'out' during it, and when you wake up and are allowed
to get up, you can get dressed, and you're up and around again. If you look at the spot where the needles went in to place the radioactive pellets into your cancerous prostate, you probably won't even find any signs of blood or a bandage, it's that neat a procedure. And it's not painful - not like surgery.

It's a better procedure than external radiation, because the treatment isn't involving other nearby organs in the radiation stream. The radiation in this case is coming from between a hundred and a hundred and fifty tiny little radioactive metal pellets that have been embedded in the cancerous areas of the prostate, where they form a small 'cloud' of radiation not much larger than the gland itself and thus they don't affect surrounding organs, as might be the case with an external beam radiation treatment.

So, if you should happen to test positive for prostate cancer, that's the way to go, in my humble opinion. I had that Brachytherapy procedure in April of 2010
and I've been cancer-free ever since. I highly recommend it.  So get tested, and don't be afraid of what may come next. It beats the hell out of the alternatives. 
And you won't 'glow in the dark' or become radioactive, because the pellets aren't that strongly radioactive themselves, and they have a half-life of around sixty days to ninety days, depending on which type are used, so you will not have an active radiation source inside you for very long - just long enough to kill the cancer before it fades away itself. So don't worry about that part of it. It's a very scientific procedure, and well proven, and I assure you, it really works!

Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7 SP-1

That earlier report today about IE-11 being available now for Windows 7 is correct, and here's the proof!

Now, I'm curious about something else I read today: to get IE-11 for Win-8, it said I'd have to upgrade Win-8 to Win-8.1 - but I don't want to! I'd like to put IE-11 on my Win-8 without upgrading to Win 8.1. I like Win-8 the way it is. The only part of Win-8.1 I'd like to install just now is the IE-11 browser.....

Speaking of videos....

This one has some food for thought in it...

 

For Windows 7 users....

I have both Win-7 and Win-8 sharing the drive, and I mostly use Win-8. Both of them have Internet Explorer, of course, but my favorite browser is still Firefox because it has more and better add-ons which offer better security for users.

Not a video...

Video sharing....

Winter in the high country

Breakfast time....

Will my next PC be an Acer?

I hope they get it together, because I think they make a good product. Acer PCs generally speaking give you more bang for your buck than most of their rivals, and I hope they weather this storm.

Blackberry still in a jam...

His Holiness asks... !

Yes, of course we feel marginalized and suffer from the impossibility of receiving the sacraments. One of the basic tenets if not the most primary of those in our faith is the principle of forgiveness of sins in order for us not to alienate ourselves from the love of God and our fellow man. How can we not forgive one another, if we believe our God will forgive us our sins?

In St. Matthew, Chapter 18, Jesus is speaking to the disciples, and in verse 21, Then Peter came up and said to him, "My Lord, if my brother is at fault with me, how many times should I forgive him? up to seven times?"

And in verse 22, Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to seventy times seventy-seven." From here to the end of the chapter at verse 35, Jesus relates a parable informing us that unless we can forgive one another, the Father in heaven will not forgive us. I fervently hope His Holiness is familiar with St. Matthew, Chapter 18, and hopefully has read it recently.

Acer Computers....

Both my computers are made by Acer, and they've been working fine. One is five years old, and the other is four. I've had better graphics cards installed in both, with their own memory on each, so I can run Windows 7 and Windows 8 without problems, and each is now configured with a two partition hard-drive,
with Windows 7 SP1 on one partition, and Windows 8 Pro on the other partition.
So it's like having four computers to play with. I think I got a little 'carried away' but it's lots of fun, except on Patch Tuesdays.

Thought-provoking...

Gazing into space, again...

About those 'reaction wheels'....is that kiddie-speak for 'gyros'? And Kepler isn't just 'semi-retired', it's evidently dead, period. A Hubble, it's not, unfortunately.

It's postulated that there's billions of Earth-like solid-bodied planets orbiting the billions of Sun-like stars (a main sequence, Population 1, yellow dwarf star) in just our own galaxy, and there's unknown billions of galaxies. So we've still got the same kind of problem those ancient Egyptian star-gazers had as they looked at the heavens on a clear moonless night those several thousand years ago; we're still asking ourselves, like Pink Floyd in one of their hit albums, "Is there anybody out there?" And there's been no reply yet from 'ET'. 

I have a theory about that. It's very possible ET may have already intercepted some of those radio and TV signals that have been flying off into space now for 
some 77 years or so, and perhaps rightly concluded that he, she, or it wants no part of those backward, war-like, and more than slightly loonie humans who inhabit this whatever-it-is here. Can't say as I'd blame old he, she, or it for feeling that way. Especially if they've watched a variety of our TV commercials   portraying most of us as simple-minded boobs who spend far too much of our time and energy primping, preening, and applying or removing various cosmetics and items of clothing, or hunting for nourishment at various buildings with small dispensing windows and big colorful signs, or looking at the newest devices for creating something we call 'gridlock'. If I was an ET, I'd be keeping a safe distance from all that myself, wouldn't you?

And today's Question Everything, in keeping with the above, is: "If we were on one electron orbiting one atom's nucleus inside an elephant's toenail, how could we possibly know we were part of an elephant?" We couldn't, of course - and that's the problem: given our limited perspective, and looking outward far enough, our known science, technology, philosophy, and religion all blends together into an inseparable mass of unanswered questions. We have hints, speculations, guesses, hopes, and a lot of fervent wishes, but no absolutely conclusive answers. Of the possible knowledge in the known universe, we presently possess a percentage in the single digits; someone said '4%' but even that is unprovable. In any case, it isn't a lot. So let's keep trying, shall we?

Computer Hard-drives: gas-filled and more capacity

The second page of this piece was actually blank, so I back-linked to an earlier piece announcing the original developments. 

Maybe data centers need drives with a capacity of 6 terabytes, but you and I probably don't, unless we never delete anything, and that wouldn't be smart.
Out-of-date programs are too prone to infections from malware, and such-like.

These friction-reducing, cooler-running hard-drives seem interesting, but being the ignoramus that I am, I wonder if this means they will run quieter, and make fewer grunts, groans, and whines as they get loaded up and then unloaded again during peak use cycles. And will Western Digital provide us with updated test procedures, similar to their 'Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows' which tells me that my Western Digital hard-drive is healthy and running normally?
May I digress here a moment? If you diagnose a Western Digital drive with the
Seagate program 'Seatools for Windows' and it fails the Short Drive Self Test or
'SDST', that's probably because it really doesn't work on "many other drives" after all, and you need the one for your own brand, so Google it, please.

The 'SeaTools for Windows' test program still works best on Seagate and Maxtor drives, and while it may give you some results for other brands, it's best to get a test program for your own brand if possible. You don't want to replace a drive just because you used the wrong test program, do you? Of course not!

Big Brother is watching, but who's watching Big Brother?

Clouds

During my morning hunt for something hopefully interesting to post on here, there was one headline I saw which practically cried out for a reply, because it said 'Windows 8 surpasses Vista in popularity'. My reaction was: "Hell, an Indian with a bonfire and a blanket, sending smoke signals from a nearby hilltop easily beats Vista in popularity everywhere but in Redmond, Washington, the home of Mighty Microsoft, creators of that abortion!"

But I shouldn't be too harshly critical, because the new computer I bought when Vista first came out proved to be ideal for testing the first public beta of Windows 7, with which I promptly replaced 'Vasta Vista' on it, against the advice of cooler heads at Microsoft. They said not to install a test beta on your main computer, because it could crash and leave you stuck. Talk about confidence in your latest product, huh? Well, they were wrong. It just happened that Windows 7 was practically bulletproof from day one, and I never went back to Vista.

As we know now, Vista wasn't all bad, just over-protected with security features verging on paranoia, and once those were suitably subdued and it was given a few tweaks, Voila! - Windows 7! I think, retrospectively, Vista's main problem was of the old 'too many cooks' variety. Microsoft could really benefit from doing more listening to its users I'd say. We might not know code from Shinola, but we definitely know what we like and what we want. And the first requirement is that it works, hopefully without a lot of third-party add-ons, tweaks, prayers, or colorful cusswords. And right out of the box - not six months down the road and three dozen patches later. Did someone say '...like Windows 8.1'?

I'm still using Windows 8, and if you want to restore the start button and a choice of start menus chosen from XP, Vista, and Windows 7 you can download a freebie program called Classic Shell which puts back the familiar Start button and its pop-up menu features. And if you want to restore the Windows 7 Sidebar and an even-greater collection of desktop gadgets, get 8gadgetpack for it. With those, your Windows 8 will have features not even found in Windows 8.1 and you probably won't miss the other tweaks contained in the 8.1 version.