Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Love Thy Neighbor--just don't get caught. Or not. Bob McDonnell's case

Most societies agree that cheating spouses aren't acceptable by anybody under any context, but the curious case of the corruption trial of Bob McDonnell finds the phenomenon a convenience, apparently.

It's not like the morals of any given society puts a stop to such behavior, but gee, as a corruption defense for the acceptance of pricey gifts? The title of the book that Judge Judy wrote comes immediately to mind--don't pee on my leg and then try to tell me it's raining.

The Crush Defense is a hoot, really. People in good committed relationships, married or not, have crushes on other people from co-workers to celebrities all the time but it never gets to the big-bucks gifting level, and that sort of thing never estranges a serious partner, either.  Unless we're talking about the case of the Appalachian Trail in Argentina, perhaps, but that's not something you could call a crush.  That's actual cheating.

(There's been an update on the Sanford situation via McClatchy.)


Mark Sanford, in doing what he did, undoubtedly caused his own grief because why would any worthwhile woman even trust a guy who would do that kind of thing in the first place?  After something like that, he'd be under suspicion every minute lest the next distracting pretty young thing comes his way and off he goes again. Good people just don't do that to other good people, and it's clear that religion is no guarantee that the believer is a good person.

But using a Cheating Spouse Defense to explain pricey gifts due to some crush, well...that just takes the ever-lovin' cake.  I'm gonna keep following developments on that mainly because it looks promising as a source of many laughs.

Seriously, though--human beings, being human animals who are usually in denial of their animal side, will think they've settled in comfortably with a loved one they'd like to grow old with for the rest of their lives and yet they'll still get turned inside out by somebody who comes along that makes 'em feel like they're 18, even though they're miles beyond menopause and they thereby consider this event to be something of a miracle (so there ya go, kids--that''s how grannies turn cougar, during that time of life when the term YOLO takes on a certain urgency).  Religion doesn't stop that from happening no matter how moral you claim you are, cuz the brains stop paying attention at that point--it can hit a person pretty hard.  Reason has nothing and never ever has had anything to do with it.

I tell ya, ladies, if any of the guys my own age looked anything like this, I just *might* take a second look at 'em...
RrrrrrOWWWWWRRRRrrrrrrrrr
Guys my age invariably look like this here--


This week on on Charlie Rose's show a sculptor who admitted that he and his partner had fallen totally in love with each other, but under the glaring cold reality of marriage practicum, it still didn't work out well and ended in divorce. And I'll bet Mark Sanford has already found that out, or is about to.

Crushes and infatuations are one thing; a good solid relationship standing the test of time is quite something else, so if the McDonnells have been married for a long, long time while actively involved with each other every step of the way, what this Cheating Spouse Defense will look like is just another instance of marital teamwork. Huge irony, that.

 But speaking of ironic--it may be counter-intuitive, but being in a solid, reliable relationship does permit the loving of other people because your view of the world isn't as cynical as the view of a person who isn't in one. What's reliably solid just isn't threatened. Being a former flower child of the 60s rather augments that aspect as well, to be sure.  But among those I love, it's important to me that I be regarded as someone people can trust, too.  I am reliable, and I want the respect of the people I love as someone who can be trusted.






Okay--I just went back to Facebook after posting the above (and yeah, I got those images from today's Facebook circulation, too. Qismat.) --and a lighter side of this topic just came down the pike. Too good to not share.

(A nod of thanks to Joey Mas on Facebook)
It's on YouTube under the name "All About That Bass" by Meghan Trainor.




UPDATE:
Boy, it sure didn't take long to get blowback on this post. Alright alright alright, it's the rule not the exception that women who think they're in solid reliable relationships wind up getting cheated on and feel blindsided by that. Yeah, I get it.  Well, even though Ronald Reagan was a crappy president, he still had a good principle called "trust but verify".  A guy who fails honesty verification will fail again and again. And again. I was born at night, but it wasn't last night.

The blowback on the last video is along the lines of how it's suggestive but is rife with child toys and dress, also suggesting a pedophelia flavor. Au contraire--the point that I got with the reference to children was that girls in particular are conditioned for what society considers proper beauty standards, equated with desirability for a future marriage partner, which often ends badly in bulimia or worse, and the video is a tacit attack on bringing up children of both genders with air-brushed ideals that just ain't real.  This sort of upbringing has been a tradition ever since human beings dared to call themselves civilized.

Boys have always been given toy soldiers instead of dolls to play war with and girls have always been given baby dolls to pretend to be mommy with instead of toy soldiers, even though both toys are dolls, and both genders got roundly disciplined when they decided to play with the "wrong" dolls.  The whole point of Boy Scouts in its inception was to establish a means by which boys could be trained to play at doing what Dad did. We might regard as charming the early history of the Scouts where learning Indian style tracking and camping and trapping were concerned, but here's a reminder that the trackers of Indians back in the day was the military.  And then there's Barbie. The endowments of Barbie strongly suggests she's no baby.  If you wanna chew somebody out about mixing childhood with adulthood, start with Mattell.

Veritas and a half. If by happenstance I find that I have your heart in my hands, you can rest assured that it's in good hands. No worries.
August 24 UPDATE: The following was circulating on Facebook today...
People who are in an abusive relationship would do better to ignore this piece of advice and jump ship anyway.  Clue One is when that person stops listening to what you have to say and dictates to you what you should think.  Jump ship immediately and kick that jerk to the curb. Yesterday.


And yet, as a person closes in on the sunset of life, there's this...





UPDATE 2:
Speaking about showing my age, this just happened on Facebook:


I didn't have the heart to tell Kevin that if he's talking VIC 20, he doesn't know from "giant floppies" cuz he's talking about a 5 1/4 incher. Dynabyte modular computers as well as latter-day mainframes used 8" floppies when they weren't using reel-to-reel tape or punchcards.  By the way, "Sinclair" and "Timex" are referring to the same machine, but in shorthand. In longhand, it's the Timex-Sinclair 1000.

The Timex-Sinclair 1000 with manual, CPU unit, and, plugged in back, an extra memory module. It didn't save programs each time you powered down and you had to save them to an audio cassette tape, from which you had to re-load them each time you turned the switch back on.  Unless you were planning to write a new program in BASIC...which you still needed to save to audio tape.


Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Haaretz's tacit strategic terrorism admission: Israel and Hamas are in league with each other

Oh, I know that the infamous Haaretz article about John Kerry didn't say that in so many words, but this is the brass tacks it boils down to.

Facts on the field confirm that Israel bombs Gaza civilians to supposedly harm Hamas, and its bombing of UN facilities makes the claim that the UN is harboring Hamas.  Hamas continues to fire rockets at Israel even after Israel bombs civilians day after day.  Result: Israel has ensured the safety of Hamas, whom it claims desires civilian casualties for propaganda, and delivers to Hamas civilian casualties obligingly, as unscathed Hamas fires rockets to give Israel more excuses to kill more civilians.

Such a tight, mutually beneficial partnership as exists between Israel and Hamas was never enjoyed even between the U.S. and the U.K.  Israel is clearly in bed with Hamas.


Let your white birds smile at the ones that stand and frown...

So raise those candles high--''cause if you don't we could stay black against the night
Oh, raise them higher again--and if you do we could stay dry against the rain




In other news, it was 40 years ago today when Mama Cass Elliot (of the Mamas & Papas) left us. Big woman, big voice.



Friday, July 25, 2014

Suffered malware attack via NCH Software, plus update


Tuesday Mini-UPDATE: --






My main machine contracted a bad case of malware in the form of SafeSearch, which will not uninstall even when you do a system restore to a previous restore point. Had to return to Factory Condition and have to figure out how the dingus machine will recognize a previous backup, which it refuses to do now. Why? It appears to operate like the old fashioned TSR type programs did.  It certainly has a behavior pattern of a TSR.

The next person using a search engine on the term SafeSearch will get this post, among others, and what I have to convey to you guys is this: it appears to be a TSR type trojan and even cleaning your Registry won't get rid of it, and it is also piggybacked with DeltaSearch and you have to hunt up info on BOTH. Most info out on the web is inadequate in this regard.  I've done a Factory Condition restoration but I've also put a block in the router for keywords SafeSearch safesear.ch deltasearch and delta.

When/if I get more information on this bastard, I'll update this post with it.

I posted a similar status update on Facebook, and one of my friends recommended Ubuntu, which is the latest version of Linux, which, in its turn, is a version of the very very very old Unix, with which I'm more familiar.  I'll repeat my reply to this person here on this blog:

Right now I'm trying the system "repair disk", which did locate my backup set, so now I'm optimistic. The problems I had with Unix was the command set and that infernal system text editor, which was extremely user-unfriendly, and I'm speaking as a person experienced with Wordstar and EDLIN. The reason I've stuck it out with Microsoft is because I knew Microsoft when it was still using C/PM. Me & Gates go back to the beginning.

 Yup--all the way back to the very C/PM beginning, when Gates was still playing in his garage, and it's my familiarity with Unix that has ruined me on Linux/Ubuntu...but...if enough of this snit happens, I'm not far away from changing my mind about that.

Malware UPDATE: I found the .exe file that was running but when I edit it, it gets reinstalled by something and YES I found my system backup files infected as well.  This is gonna take a lot of quality time by the looks of it.

I found the file spro.exe to be running while my browsers got hijacked, and that's found under User\name\AppData\Local\SearchProtect.  There's also an uninstall.exe file there, and when I ran it, it did look like the program actually got uninstalled. But when I clicked on a browser, it was still hijacking the browser.  This is gonna be a long, long battle {sigh}.

....and I see that people in China are very interested in this post. Hehehehe--you guys ain't whupped me yet, and I have my ways of locating TSRs. It...Is...ON!

Recognize this line, guys? : Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a
 
How about this one? windows_tracing_logfile=C:\BVTBin\Tests\installpackage\csilogfile.log

Or this one? ComSpec=C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe


Yeah, I lifted those out of your program. And I speak hexadecimal fluently. There's nothing like actually reading the trojan program to find out where the TSR is installed, now, is there. You boys picked on the wrong gal this time.

Malware UPDATE 2: Origin of my infection has been established. It is #NHCSoftware via what it claims are free versions but instead are free trials. Freeware doesn't expire, but NCH "free version" software does, and when it expires, the malware launches. Boycott NCH Software.

As to locating a TSR, what I found was a bunch of  not-exactly-TSRs and they were spread out through the operating system. I'm cured, but reverse-engineering this stuff ain't gonna happen overnight. Yeah, you hackers are too clever by half.  At least where MY machines are concerned. Just remember this, hackers--when you leave files on my machines, I can and will use them to find you where you live. It's elementary, my dear Watson--the info you filch from others is of no use to you without you being online too, and when YOU are online, you'd best keep watching over your shoulder.

Almost forgot to add this li'l story of what I did to an ad hacker outfit based in France a few years back. If you're old enough to remember Xupiter, you get the idea of what these guys did, using the name Xiti although their main ops was named Yatoula.  They infected my machine, and by reading their files I found their main server and discovered that browser hijacking/ad serving wasn't the only thing they did. I got in the server's back door and found a treasure trove of animated GIF images they lifted from their victims, and I, in turn, lifted the images from them.

I've already posted a few, by the way, last year in between the Turkey Day recipes I posted about in November.  ALL of those came from THEM.  And now, I shall commence to be insufferably smug for the rest of the day.








I think I forgot to mention, too, that after I got into their server's back door, I also saved pages and pages of the links to their image collection and hot-linked 'em all over cyberspace.  I'll bet the damn thing got extremely non-stop busy, ha.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

R.I.P. James Garner, w/personal trivia & update..

This blog is in mourning over the passing of Jim Garner, whose fans all know was a fellow Okie.  That's not the close-to-home bit for me, though.

I've watched the tributes this evening over national broadcast entities and they all cited his best known works alright. They all overlooked Hallmark's "Decoration Day", though, and that's the one that's special to me.  Why? Because of his co-star, that's why. We went to the same high school and that's the person I knew personally. I still have the yearbook where she did high school theater in the form of "The Admirable Chrichton", co-starring H. E. Baccus.

She bills herself as Judith Ivey, but to those of us of same/similar high school graduating class, she's still Judy.  When I find the yearbook and scan the pics, I'll post 'em.

#JimGarner
#JamesGarner
#JudithIvey
#JudyIvey

Beth Gentry and Judy Ivey from a group photo in which H. E. Baccus also appears...

H. E. Baccus. Ivey and Baccus both appeared in...


That's Judy in the top photo aiming that bow.
In the frame on the right, guess who was spoofing Goldie Hawn....


Yeah, not me--I was a whole lot better in the audience, and a whole lot more into Isaac Asimov.

Yup, I was into Isaac Asimov at the time, a nascent time traveler even back then; Doctor Who was on PBS and it was the Tom Baker Doctor at the time. Also into Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Richard Armour, Mark Twain, O. Henry, Bennett Serf, Ogden Nash, Don Marquis,William Saroyan, and, of course, Charlie Loudenboomer. Yeah, you can see an early pattern here, including the beginnings of the intrepid navigation of any given library, not just school, college, public, science, or law library.




==========================================
Thursday footnote: Speaking of Isaac Asimov, I totally love this Cadillac commercial, performed with what's known in the robot trade as "peanut pickers"...



I've noticed a number of hits here from the UK and I feel compelled to add that an additional early influence was Doug Adams. Even though he's a noted author, that's not how I was introduced to his work. It was via the BBC World Service. People familiar with Charlie Loudenboomer know that he's from the world of shortwave radio, and so it was: I was heavily into shortwave radio as a DXing hobby, too, sideline of amateur radio and that came as a result of being previously involved in what was then known as Civil Defense.

The Beeb was running the radio series, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at the time and Doctor Who was an incidental interest.  It wasn't until Doctor Who got restarted with "NuWho" that I learned that Doug Adams also wrote for Doctor Who during the Tom Baker years.  Small planet.




Tuesday UPDATE:
Speaking of not-quite-famous people, there was a Kyle Dillingham concert last night to benefit a guy who needed a liver transplant, and I've got some videos of that, which I'll post as soon as they're processed. Even if he's not a nation-wide household-known name, he's still a helluva guy to go see.


Here are a couple vids. The venue is the Enid Symphony Orchestra building, which used to be a Masonic temple. Keep in mind that Kyle is a religious Assembly of God type of guy. There's a bit of crowd-watching in this vid, though; the first guy zoomed in on is the guy who benefits from this concert.  The second, a gal, is an Enid Chautauqua regular.  Enjoy...



Blogger errored out when I tried to upload the following vid, so I had to make it iPhone size. Sorry, people. Next, Kyle has explaining to do...


Now I'm thinking that I might be able to go back to large size if I break this vid up into two pieces.  Not tonight, though--that's a Manana Project.



Thursday, July 17, 2014

Today's deplorable events affect personal relations

...first, in the form of one particular Russian that I know frequents this blog. I haven't spoken to you lately, gri, and today's shooting down of a passenger plane near Ukraine will ensure that won't happen in the duration because I'm also familiar with your ideology, which is definitely on the wrong side of events surrounding the separatists.  Ain't gonna happen.  Nothing justifies what happened today.

I'll say the same about Hamas, and the fact that Sisi in Egypt regards them as Muslim Brotherhood affiliates, and I have Egyptian friends who support Morsi, of the Brotherhood.  Sisi is a dictator, but no moreso than Morsi, and the one thing in Sisi's favor is pragmatism regarding Egypt's neighbors.

I'm totally with my Arab friends on the issue of Zionism, and I know that there's no such thing as a religion gene no matter how many people religiously believe that their religion is a "people".  Nope. Semitic Jews are semitic and so are Arabs, but not European Jews, because Judaism is a religion and there's no such thing as religion being genetic.  Nor should genetics matter in matters of state--that's racism.

But this crap about re-establishing a Sunni califate empire is absurd because the original empire of that genre wasn't just Sunni nor just Shiite either. Inshallah, the original fell to Genghis Khan, and inshallah, Genghis fell to Othman--a Turk, not an Arab.  What Abu Bekr al Baghdadi aspires to in his little megalomaniacal mind is not the will of Allah.

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Hello again, China.

I'm posting a post dedicated just to you, because not only have you been hitting on this blog hard, you've been sending me crap email about how there are new comments on this blog.

Who do you think you're fooling, exactly?

EPIC FAIL

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Hectic July thusfar--more visits announced; international news

Got one visit already from AZ and two more maybes:

Ras is passing thru this area again and he's bringing his wife this time.  And there's a musician I've been arguing with since the days of Air America Radio who tells me that Tulsa might be on his tour schedule.  Nope, not Watermelon Slim this time--I've argued with him since well before Air America Radio was even founded--It's Billy Boom & Crazyhearse, of Vermont.

Slim didn't qualify as an out-of-stater until he moved to Mississippi, so he does now...but...gonna have to wait til Labor Day to take another shot at going to Rentiesville OK...IF he's going this year.

We'll see.

For the information of anyone else wanting to drop by for a visit, the rule is to meet at the Hastings bookstore on Owen K. Garriott Rd, Sunset Plaza.  No exceptions unless you're a performer and we can visit at your venue location.

=================================================

There's some other stuff in the works but am not at liberty to divulge those things at the moment, although if things work out properly, will post a later blog entry in that regard.


I've noticed a lot of blog traffic originating in China lately, and I have to add that yeah, the world's got multiple hot spots yet again, but everything I could say on those subjects has been said, and that includes the topic of Israel vs Gaza.  While I may point out the multiple cases where religion is at the root of legitimizing atrocity, China might gloat over that but has no reason to--without religion, China is still atrocious because people in power get corrupted, religion or not.  Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, so the only thing one can say about religion in that regard is that religion is no guarantee of morality or immunity from corruption.  Either way, there's corruption because both government and religion are man's inventions, and man is corruptible.

Monday, July 07, 2014

Reza Aslan, Sufi Apologist--Malala Day update

I would have slipped this in with the Sunday UPDATE tacked on at the end of the previous blog post, but it's important enough to put in a separate post.

I was watching Book TV's In Depth featuring Reza Aslan and noticed some interesting omissions and mischaracterizations he committed. He was then asked if he was Shiya and he said that he avoided sectarian labels, then proceeded to emphasize the divine.  Sorry, Reza, but that's the definition of a Sufi.  You may dislike the label, but you're a Sufi, and Sufis offer apologetics instead of history of record regarding Islamic history--and you proved to be no different in that interview.

Aslan stated that Mohammed started out being of reviled status as an orphan belonging to a subcatagory tribe of a larger powerful tribe, while omitting that a prominent member of that prominent tribe adopted him and for a while Mohammed was the adopted brother of Ali, the fourth Calif and founder of the Shiites.  Aslan failed to mention the status of Mohammed's first wife as a powerful merchant lady of that same powerful tribe, and failed to mentioned the father of Mohammed's second wife, a prominent general of that same powerful tribe--which Aslan finally, at long last, named in the course of the interview: the Koreish.

Regarding a question about Persian Zoroasterism, Aslan said that there were Zoroasterists today but failed to say that they're the Parsees. FAIL

I've said before in previous posts about Islamic history that Sufis are apologists; behold Book TV's poster boy of that fact: Reza Aslan.

But fact still remains that Sufis are better than either Sunnis or Shiites in terms of providing more accurate Islamic history and so I'll mention Aslan's book, "No god but God", as a fair enough background on Islam compared to others, although comparing that to others still isn't saying much.  Read with several grains of salt.




Speaking of stupid religious strife, here's a cheery Tuesday UPDATE for ya: today is World Kiss Day.  And a cheery image to go with it.


Here's the link

And tomorrow, Wednesday July 9, is Malala Day. Peace on Earth isn't just for Christmas anymore.


Best damn video found on Facebook today, on Malala Day:


Best video on the whole planet, IMHO.  Even in the midst of all the proliferating violent conflicts, it's things like this that will still convince a time traveler that this is the best damn planet in the universe.  Whether you stand with Malala or stand with your next door neighbor, what's important is taking that stand in the first place.





Friday, July 04, 2014

Happy 4th, Happy Canada Day plus Sunday Update

Had a jam-packed day today and couldn't come up for air long enough for even a perfunctory Independence Day entry on this blog.

Til now, that is.

Let freedom ring!





Sunday UPDATE: a few of my friends have experienced some "life events" in recent days and you betcha I care about all of them.  I've said this before in an update on a February posting, and I'll say it again: when a person reaches a certain age, and is of a certain generation where dear friends were lost too early in the early days of hallucinogenic drug experimentation (and in one case, being beer-drunk on a motorcycle and in another, beer-drunk in a jeep while daring to do some unwise hill-climbing) one appreciates more fully what people remain.  Among those who were actual orphans, or effectively orphaned, it's appropriate to call them family, bloodlines notwithstanding.  Some people just matter a lot, therefore are the people I care a great deal about, and the only accurate thing to call it is love.


 Amen and a  half to that. If there are people you care deeply about, regardless of whether or not they're related to you, make a point of telling them you love them because tomorrow might take that chance away from you.  You never know, and we may never pass this way again.


As a time traveler, I don't rely on books much, although I find them handy for navigational purposes.  There's a book I'd recommend for fellow time travelers, though, in conjunction with a website I heard about for the first time on Meet The Press.  It is:

Here Is Where