Software Updates.

Google announced today that they are discontinuing support for their web browser, Google Chrome, in April 2016 for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Mac OS X 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8. Current versions of the mentioned operating systems (Windows 7, 8, 10, Mac OS X 10.9, 10.10, etc.) will continue to receive updates to the popular web browser.

I’m surprised that people are still running these older operating systems, especially Windows XP and Windows Vista.  Windows XP has been around for 15 years and Windows Vista was, well Windows Vista, and Microsoft did their best to get people off of that software as quickly as possible because Windows Vista was basically a mess.

Many folks use Google Chrome as their primary browser. I used to, but Apple beefed up Safari in their latest version of OS X (El Capitan) to the point that I feel comfortable using Safari my primary browser now. I still do development work on Firefox, a popular free and open-source browser available on many operating systems, including the ones mentioned in the Google blog entry I referenced. If you’re dead set on staying on Windows XP, you can switch to Firefox and still do what you need to do.

But I wouldn’t really recommend it.

As a young geek I was always thrilled with the release of a new or updated operating system. I wanted to see the new graphics, the different approaches, the changes in paradigm. What new goodies would be lurking at every point and click as I moved around after a fresh update. Often times I would join into beta programs so I could help with the testing. I was even a pre-beta tester on Windows Vista (after that statement I always say, “I’m sorry”), but as I grow older and my expectations of how a computer should work become more solidified, I am cautious about upgrades today. I didn’t upgrade my work MacBook Pro to El Capitan until I was absolutely sure that everything would work. I take the same approach with my home computers and with Earl’s MacBook. I still upgrade, primarily for the security benefits and because it’s the most supported way to go, but I’m cautious about it. We have about six different ways to backup computers and mobile devices in this house. It’d be great if I could get all participants to participate.

While there are usually many bells and whistles associated with a software upgrade, there are also security upgrades that should be strongly considered. These security upgrades help keep the bad folks out of your hard drive. Yesterday I was disheartened to see that my medical records at the doctor’s office are still being maintained on computers running Windows XP. Windows XP is not really supported by Microsoft anymore, leaving these things open to new viruses and other types of nasty attacks. Ransomware is quite popular; your files are remotely encrypted by a nasty organizationthey send you a message that you have to contact a phone number some place and demand that you pay a ransom to decrypt your files. By the way, don’t ever respond to that sort of thing, just consider your files lost and go to your latest backup because you are backing up your files on a regular basis, correct? I’ve had relatives get caught with this sort of thing; they are now running Linux on their rebuilt laptops because Linux is much more impervious to that type of attack.

Part of the driving force of software upgrades is marketing. New software usually requires a faster computer and if you’re starting to fall behind the computer hardware curve, it may prompt you to get a new computer so you have the latest and the greatest. Earl’s MacBook Pro is about there, I don’t know how he chugs along on his six year old laptop with degraded trackpad quality. I don’t particularly like the idea of tossing a computer because the software has become outdated on it; we have a computer built in 1996 running the clock system wired through the house and it is working perfectly fine.

However, if you’re running Windows XP or Vista, you should really consider moving on to a better computing experience. At the very least you’ll still be able to securely run Google Chrome on your desktop.

11 November 2015 by Geek 0

Relax.

I had my annual physical today. My family physician of over 20 years abruptly decided that he no longer enjoyed the weather of Central New York and gave little notice when he departed at the beginning of the summer, so today I had my physical with a new doctor at the same location. We reviewed my medical history, the dosages of my blood pressure and cholesterol medication. He was surprised that I survived Spinal Meningitis when I was just shy of my second birthday. I guess I just kind of take that for granted. We talked about flying and my FAA Medical Requirements. I like the new doctor. After the first visit I am comfortable with seeing him again.

The nurse that readied me for the entrance of the doctor weighed me, took my temperature and blood pressure and the like. She thought my temperature was low (97ºF) but I wasn’t surprised, normal human temperature is approaching a fever for me. I usually hover around 96.8 or so, so the 97 wasn’t unexpected. My blood pressure was up at 144/98. She weighed me in kilograms. I enjoyed seeing the Metric system in use. I weighed what I thought I should weigh with clothes on so I was comfortable but not happy with her assessment.

The doctor commented that my blood pressure was high; I asked him to retake it and it was much lower. He asked if that happened often and I replied to affirmative; I have high blood pressure because they’re checking my blood pressure. I hate the cuff on my arm. The second time it was much better (but not great) at 130/88.

I think a lot of what elevates my blood pressure is the way I see the world. I choose to look at Facebook and I come to the realization that there have been a lot of ignorant people in my life. I watch all sorts of ridiculous outbursts take place on Twitter and I can’t help but get angry; people are having incredible hissy fits and screaming things about a “War on Christmas” because Starbucks didn’t make their holiday cup festive enough. Hell, they even talked about the Starbucks Red Cup on the latest round of the Republican Debates, which, by the way, is depressing, infuriating and maddening enough to make my blood pressure go up. And we have a whole year to go before we decide who gets the big chair in the White House.

I was going to continue with this blog entry but I felt my face starting to warm, a sign that my blood pressure was going up. I’m going to sit back, wind this down and go watch a video about kittens or something.

10 November 2015 by Why. 0

Bounce.

I had this song cranked up in the Jeep after listening to their later single “Roam.” I used to bounce around with all the other folks on the dance floor at the 1270 in Boston in the mid 1980s.

Here’s The B-52’s with “Rock Lobster”!

9 November 2015 by DJ 0

Work Space. 

I’ve mentioned before that I love being a digital nomad. The majority of my work time is spent at home in my home office. One of the challenges of not working in a traditional work environment is the separation of work life from home life; it is quite easy to constantly work when the work computer is just a few steps away at any given moment.
Moving from one gig to another career opportunity earlier this year presented me with another unique situation in that with both jobs I work primarily out of the same office. I sit at the same desk, with the same surroundings looking at the same type of monitor even though I work for entirely different company now. Contract workers and the like probably don’t find this unusual but for me there were many similarities and I found myself falling into ruts from my old job rather quickly with my new job, which wasn’t fair to me or to the new corporation nor was it really indicative of how excited I really am about this fairly new gig.Enter my little renovation project.
I’ve been saying to Earl that I wanted to revamp my home office. It’s one of the four rooms we had built into our basement a decade or so ago and my office was originally my music and recording studio. Since giving up that hobby in 2010, the space became my office but with some of the remaining recording equipment still in place. The space wasn’t efficient as an office. I felt crammed into a corner. My desk had too many papers and too much dust. I didn’t feel productive in there, I felt like I just worked.
Earl’s suggestion was that we completely gut the room and start from scratch. I loved that idea but my patience wasn’t where it needed to be to accomplish this. And, aside from the fact that I really do love spending money, I couldn’t justify buying new furniture for my office. Sure, my existing desk has a few dings and bang ups here and there but for the most part it’s functional and it sure looked better than what I had in my last cubicle at my last gig. So on Sunday and yesterday, I loaded up some contractor bags with a lot of junk I haven’t touched in a year or two. I wiped everything down, getting rid of all the dusts and cobwebs. I took off a shelf that ran along one side of my desk, it served no purpose than to gather things and provide a hiding place for other things I didn’t really need. The studio space countertops were repurposed, the drawers and cabinets were emptied and organized. The only thing that I purchased for the space was a desk lamp; I hate overhead ceiling lighting, especially flourescent lighting, so I moved some of our LED lamps. I can now control the brightness and color of the room lighting with an iPhone app. I discarded the keyboard shelf (I never used it) and I turned my main monitor and the whole focal point of my desk onto an angle so that I had ample work room on either side of my computer.
This morning I went to work happy and excited to sit down at my revamped work area. I’m feeling a little antsy about getting out and working remotely again (I’ll be doing that next week) but for working from home, my new space is perfect.
  

  

3 November 2015 by Fun and Games Dept 1

1 AM Flashback.

When I was a club DJ, I would always spin a “flashback set” at 1 a.m. The set usually consisted of three or four songs beat mixed together. This track from 1986, “For Tonight” by Nancy Martinez was one of my favorites to mix in the set.

31 October 2015 by DJ 0

Countdown.

In just under 54 hours from the writing of this blog entry, the Eastern Time Zone of the United States will be back in sync with the sun. Noon will be noon and we won’t be jimmying around with the clocks to make the sheep (and I’m not referring to farm animals) think they have an “extra” hour of sunlight.

Every time I hear someone comment that they’re happy that the day is longer during Daylight Saving Time (there is no “s” at the end of “saving”) I want to smack them. Instead I start to rant about time being relative and if they want a longer day perhaps they should get their butt out of bed earlier.

I go on and on about Daylight Saving Time around this time of year every year because for the past three weeks I feel like I have been trapped in a constant state of jet lag. It was bad enough when Daylight Saving Time ended on the third Sunday in October, but then George W. Bush pushed it to the first Sunday in November so that the trick-or-treaters could do their thing when it was still daylight, except that at 19:06 EDT, it’s not still daylight. It’s still just as dark when though rugrats go trick-or-treating, so we’re not really saving anything there.

Others counter that the “extra” hour of daylight gives folks the opportunity to enjoy daylight after work for a longer amount of time. I went for a walk during sunset this evening and no one was jogging, running, walking or spending time outdoors. The only activity I could see was the glimmer of computer monitors through unlit windows.

We need stop messing around with the clocks twice a year. We should just set the damn things one half hour back this weekend and never touch them again. If you want more daylight, get up earlier. If you want more daylight after work, go to work earlier. If you want to run around in the daylight, go running earlier. Time is relative. For those of us whose bodies are in relative sync with the actual time as dictated by the sun, going to bed when we’re not tired and getting up when we’re tired just so we can hear how much the farmers love Daylight Saving Time (they actually hate it as much as I do) is getting, well, tiresome.

In less than 54 hours it will be light in the morning again and dark in the evening and I, for one, will not be so blurry eyed and cranky because our arbitrary assignment of time will actually match what’s going on outside.

And just for that, I will go for a walk, in the dark, because I’m not afraid of the dark.

29 October 2015 by Ponderings and Musings Why. 1

Fraud.

This morning I received word from our bank’s Fraudulent Activity Department that my debit card had been used for purchases at Office Max/Office Depot for $413 (where the purchase was approved) and another business for $250 (where it was denied). One minute before the Office Max purchase, I had used ApplePay here at home. They turned my card off immediately but I still had to go down to the bank to dispute the $413 charge.

After bouncing text messages back and forth with Earl, we both came to the realization that the Office Max in question is near the mall we were at Saturday night, where I used my debit card to purchase movie tickets, the aforementioned concession items and then a quick bite to eat at TGIFridays. The staff at the TGIFriday’s in question seemed a little shady and the server took an unusually long time to process my credit card transaction to pay the bill. I’m willing to bet that’s where the theft took place, but I have no way of proving it.

Of course I engaged some brief hysteria where I made declarations such as, “I’m never using my debit card for a purchase again”, “I’m moving all of our money into the mattress and paying only with cash” and “I need another American Express account to act as a buffer”, but Earl kept me off the ledge and I simply ordered a new debit card. It should be here in 10 days and it will not be based on mid 20th Century technology (with the stripe) but will have a 21st Century still chip embedded in the card, much like Europe has used for a decade or so.

I have also pledged to try to not use my card where I need to relinquish the card to a third party or where I can’t use ApplePay to pay.

When speaking with the folks at the bank to file my fraud claim, they remarked that they highly recommend the use of ApplePay because it’s nearly impossible to steal. The numbers are changing, everything is encrypted and there’s no physical card. No one at the bank branch has an Apple Watch but they use ApplePay on their iPhones and they recommend that customers do the same with either ApplePay or the Google payment mechanism on Android phones.

It’s hard to believe that the “greatest country on Earth” is still reliant on 1950s technology (which was perfected in 1969) to process computerized information when it comes to payments. I really don’t know why U.S. citizens put up with it. The woman that I filed my fraud claim with remarked that she has to do it several times a year because she uses her card everywhere.

This has got to be costing somebody lots of money somewhere.

I’ve doubled down on my ApplePay usage and I’m getting smarter about where and how I use my debit card. Until American retailers stop arguing on how contactless payments should work (and trying to sabotage the efforts of companies like Apple and Google), maybe we need to move to Europe where everything is chip based.


Reference material:
ApplePay
Android Pay
Credit Card Magnetic Stripe Technology

28 October 2015 by Why. 2

Real Time.

I’ve been trying to be more realistic with my time management skills. As a bit of a dreamer and a person that I like to think is mostly positive, I try my best to do as much as I can with the time allotted to a 24 hour day. I like to do things, I like to meet new people, I like new experiences. Unfortunately, I also like to make people happy so when the timing of an activity is on the fence, I’m more inclined to say yes instead of being realistic about the situation and saying no. This stems from not wanting to disappoint people. I can’t handle sad faces and I certainly don’t like disappointment. It’s also a part of my genuine enthusiasm for an activity. If I truly didn’t want to do something or go somewhere, I’d say no right away. If I wanted to and I was hopeful but not realistic about the timing, I’d say yes and then possibly cancel, which is kind of rude, now that I think about it.

So in the last couple of weeks I’ve been trying really hard to say no. 

Saying no isn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. Only a couple of folks have whined about my declination of an event since I’ve been practicing this whole realistic timing thing lately, most take my no graciously. This practice has extended to my work habits, I’m now taking my normal time computation formula for a project, adding a fudge factor and then doubling the whole thing. Don’t tell anyone at work that I’m doing this. It makes me look like a superstar  when I finish a project before the doubled deadline and it makes me feel really good when I can subtract the fudge factor from the equation.

I really need to slow down my life. Between working 50-55 hours a week, doing all sorts of nifty things with Earl on the weekend, flying an airplane whenever I can, studying as an instrument pilot and whole bunch of other responsibilities and obligations, I have a lot on my plate.

I need to clear the plate off, be more selective of what’s there and then concentrate on that. This will be a nice little improvement to my life.

I won’t be out of breath when I smile.

26 October 2015 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Excess.

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Image courtesy of a Google search leading to this blog, “My Midlife Crisis Is Orange”.

Remember the days when ordering a large drink from the movie theatre meant you were getting a 24 ounce cup of something? The sizes were 12, 16 and 24 ounces. The large seemed a little excessive but going to the movies was a treat and sometimes you wanted to accompany your treat with another treat.

Last night Earl and I went to see “The Intern”. We had both been wanting to see this movie as from the trailer it seemed rather light with just the right amount of introspection, the story seemed interesting and it had an excellent cast. Quick summary, we both enjoyed the movie very much.

Before entering the theatre we stopped at the concession stand to order the compulsory snacks for the event. Popcorn is my favorite food, so I ordered a large (but no butter) and a large Coke Zero.

I was presented with a tub of popcorn (a bigger tub than normal) and 54 OUNCES of Coke Zero. I’m no rocket scientist, but I’m pretty sure that the elixir of badness in Coke Zero should not be consumed in amounts greater than 16 ounces, let alone 54 ounces.

That tub of Coke Zero was just 10 ounces shy of two QUARTS of liquid. That’s 1.6 liters! 1.6 liters! I was handed 54 ounces of caffeinated diet brew with a plastic lid and a straw.

On the bright side, it fit in the cup holder in the theatre.

Because the vat was already filled before I realized the size of the drink I had just ordered, I used our line of credit to pay for this huge drink and popcorn and I lugged everything to the theatre. The barrel of pop fit in the cup holder, I arranged for my popcorn to have its own seat.

Earl looked at me like I was nuts because, well, I am nuts.

So we enjoyed the movie but I felt guilty for wasting about two-thirds of the popcorn, about three-quarters of the Coke Zero and the line of credit arranged for the payment of such waste. As a good citizen I carried my garbage out of the theatre and when I dropped it into the bin, the garbage can shuttered and there was a loud thud.

We all know that I am occasionally insane, but who in their right mind needs 54 ounces of any sort of snack beverage, especially since many probably order the full strength, sugar laden version of Coke.

The next time we go to the movies I going to act like a kid and go for the kids’ sized drink and popcorn, unless the kids’ sized drink is now 24 ounces or something.

Maybe I should just sneak in my own bottle of water.

25 October 2015 by Ponderings and Musings 1

About J.P.

Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.

Weird? Eccentric!

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