Welcome
- July 1, 2018
- International Tartan Day 2018
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As I have noted earlier I am of Western European extraction with my lineage being from both Great Britain and Scotland. Since I have had more of an affinity for my mother's side of the family that Scot in me tends to come out on occasion ...
Tartan Days are celebrations of Scottish heritage. Beginning on April 6, the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320.
It has it's beginnings in Canada of the mid-1980s and spread to other communities of the Scottish diaspora in the 1990s.
Today we celebrate the Austrailian version called International Tartan Day is held on July 1, which corresponds to the date upon which the 1747 Act of Proscription that banned the wearing of tartan was repealed.
Tartan Days usually feature parades of pipe bands with Highland dancing, traditional games of strength, and other Scottish cultural entertainment.
I usually simply admire from afar as I am doing this year.
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- June 30, 2018
- Asteroid Day
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Today is Asteroid Day.
AKA "International" Asteroid Day, it falls on the anniversary of the Tunguska event in Siberia which fell on June 30th, 1908, and is the the most devastating recent asteroid-related event on the planet.
The day is dedicated to study of the asteroid and associated risks of impact on the Earth.
The main three goals are:
Employ available technology to detect and track Near-Earth Asteroids that threaten human populations via governments and private and philanthropic organisations.
A rapid hundred-fold acceleration of the discovery and tracking of Near-Earth Asteroids to 100,000 per year within the next ten years.
Global adoption of Asteroid Day, heightening awareness of the asteroid hazard and our efforts to prevent impacts, on June 30 - With the United Nations recognition, this action item has been achieved.
From the Asteriod Day Declaration - Comments (0)
- June 29, 2018
- Location Information and Me
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There is a bit of a hubub going on about the sharing of location information. Typically some networked device like a web browser or a cell phone operates under software with coding to both evaluate and store this data ... primarily geolocation stuff and you are allowed to "opt out" as it were at your discretion.
Now then, I am not a proponent of sharing location data. This is due to the incorrect geolocation associated with my IP. I fully understand that this is the fault of the ISP and I will hold them accountable in due time — two months now and counting.
They have me listed as Summerville, SC when in fact I am about 110 miles away. Nobody thinks that I should care about this only I've brought it to the attention of everyone involved from stupid google to idiot ISP and they can all shove it at this point.
The GIS antenna is one of those expendible items installed which I have no qualms in cutting with extreme prejudice.
Suffice it to say that location information as it relates to stupid Google and the equally stupid Time Warner now called Spectrum leads me to believe that my business and traffic are not valued and as such I will be separating from both as a matter of course imminently.
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- June 28, 2018
- Google now Gone
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Well. Google ignored robots.txt and my host blocks by using IPs instead ... and that was the final straw.
Google is now banished from the realm entirely. I'm going by subnet increment disallows.
It's a shame when a search engine presumes to be more than it is. Turns out I don't need them at all.
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- June 28, 2018
- I Tossed Out Google
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I've decided that Google is simply not an "organic" search engine, but an ad company ... solely, unequivocally — and a very greedy one at that. For this reason, I am blocking their spiders with scripting of my own design.
They have a propensity for bypassing the usual identifications with their crawlers and I have both anticipated and coded up front for this as well.
In an attempt to be fair, I am not blocking search engine results solely because they come from google. If there is a hit the fact that it comes from google will not cause that hit to be forbidden.
I decline to be the victim of a monopoly any longer. I don't shop at Amazon for the same reason. The rest of you can do whatever you like. They can index the business card. They can index the hobby site. The have to stay off the blog however and I'm not going to mess with them anymore about it.
If they get too pushy I still have a set of IP firewall rules already written to keep them off my node entirely. When I think of how many stupid seo "professionals" want to push sites to google it just makes me want them around me even less.
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- June 27, 2018
- National HIV Testing Day 2018
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Today is National HIV Testing Day, aka NHTD. It is a day for people to be exposed to the idea of testing for HIV and know their status.
Those reasons are typically personal and of the 11 million US citizens who have HIV one in seven are unaware of the fact.
HIV is a viral infection spread through certain bodily fluids which attacks the immune system.
The CD4 "T Lymphocytes" are specifically targeted by the virus, progressively weakening the immune system until it is no longer effective at fighting off infections.
This creates the potential for opportunistic infections and cancers culminating in the full blown AIDS (acquired immunodeficency syndrome).
Having witnessed the effects of AIDS first hand as I have is a very humbling and sympathy inducing experience.
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- June 26, 2018
- Christmas made a Federal Holiday in 1870
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On this day in 1870 the holiday of Christmas was officially declared a federal holiday in the United States.
This was fine and well and good until the brigand Barack Obama decides to declare that the United States is no longer a Christian nation ...
Which it REMAINS despite his evil muslim satanic rant.
We remain "One Nation Under God" despite those atheists and interlopers trying to impart their stench upon The Republic.
Those leftist globalist democrats and their so called progressive variants who would have us become a globalist new world order slave like the EU is making out of Europe as we speak.
The mistakes of allowing "just anyone" to emigrate is becoming evident in Germany and Scandinavia.
Sharia will never be the rule of law in the United States of America.
Too many of us here simply won't stand for it or any manner of intruder attempting to force it upon us.
God rest ye merry gentlemen.
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- June 25, 2018
- The Long Goodbye From my local K-Mart
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K-Mart has a location at 1500 Charleston Hwy, West Columbia, SC 29169 (803) 794-9150 which has been around since my childhood. This is a store where I shopped for Christmas presents when I was just a chap ... and it's still here in the same place with pretty much the same exterior look but a much different interior look.
You can imagine my pleasure to find that it was not going to be closed with those many other K-Mart stores in that last spate of closings recently. However, this all ended with my last few visits because I came to the sad realization that it's just a matter of time.
The management of this location is totally unsatisfactory. I repeatedly go there to find them air conditioning the airport vicinity with front doors wide open in the hundred degree plus heat indices.
This along side the other mismanagement makes me wonder if anyone really cares about profitability when I see the prices of items I can walk across the street and get for 30% less on average.
Then there are those episodes like the day I saw a young black man take his old beat up shoes and put them in the box from which he had just changed to brand new shoes only to place the box with his old shoes on the rack and walk out unchallenged by any of the several employees milling around him.
I bought two laundry products where the prices were not those at the display from which I chose them as I stood in the humdity and heat adjacent to that door which had been open all day long adding adding more to the cost of operation which I can only presume trickled down to me with a selection of overpriced products and subpar order and cleanliness of the entire facility.
Yes, the old K-Mart of my youth is dying a slow painful death from a corporate structure either too disinterested or too stupid to see the folly at hand and just why they will never be profitable at that location.
Why don't they fire these stupid employees and give the store a fighting chance ? Could it be that the entire organization has fallen into such disarray that everyone is simply too incompetent to do what is necessary to operate ? It sure appears so.
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- June 24, 2018
- Celebration of the Senses Day 2018
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When I was a child I studied health and biology. Topics within those courses included the classic five human senses:
• sight
• hearing
• touch
• smell
• taste
Later in the game came several more, including thermoception (temperature gradients) and magnetoception (direction) both of which I have as I am sensitive to heat and cold and have never been lost in many thousands of miles traveling in an automobile with neither map nor GPS.
June 24 is Celebration of the Senses Day. It is a day when we acknowledge our ability to perceive the world around us to varying degrees. Some of us have rather dull perceptions. Others of us sharp and precise perceptions.
The loss of some senses may be compensated for by others.
Regardless, they are a manifestation of that wonder called "life" and are worth consideration.
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- June 23, 2018
- The Demise of Good Chinese Takeout
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Chinese Takeout used to be one of those constant quality availabilities which are no more.
The new deal consists of a bunch of Asians utilizing Hispanic cooks and the end result is some sort of chinkoid gook mex piss poor substitute for what was formerly a smattering of deliciousness to be had late into the nights in my area.
Places I would go out of my way to patronize. They simply no longer exist in this realm of unskilled culinary fakery.
There are a couple of buffets I will visit but there too the quality has diminished. The authenticity wanes.
I suppose it was the old guard proprietors with their real Szechuan and flavors of Asia I left behind so long ago.
Now we get substitutes created by some employee who isn't even authentic chinese either.
So it stands. My pursuit of Good Chinese takeout eludes me into that fog of cheap substitutes and deviant palates so I'm just going to be less enthused than I was in the days of authentic Chinese which seems so very long ago.
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- June 22, 2018
- More Computer Repair Scams
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Though I personally feel that it would take a very gullible individual to fall for this, it appears that the presence of continuing pitfalls in the form of computer repair scams are pervasive; likely due to a lack of sophistication of the typical computer user.
Recently my elderly aunt received a cell phone call from "microsoft" saying that her machine was compromised and required immediate attention by their skilled technicians to forestall total calamity. The insinuation was imminent failure with total loss of her machine and it's content.
It was a ruse which worked to their advantage and unfortunately she suffered financial predation by these individuals to the tune of five hundred smackers.
She lacked experience with this type of low down shyster causing undue separation of cash from her payment card but at least she has not engaged them further.
It would not surprise me if microsoft held specific scammer classes in their scam called "certification training" because that's a big chunk of their revenue as well. Creating software so easily exploited is the hallmark of an over commercialized underthought technology.
Our informational footprint — that stuff you put out there provides more the scammers have with which to "get you".
Back up your data, preferably on a removable medium like a USB 3.0 drive or some flash memory component.
If approached in a "cold call" whereby you did not initiate the interaction you should hang up immediately. Nobody out there ... especially a scammer is so benevolent as to volunteer such repair service in the nick of time as claimed by these idiots who would have their way with you.
Watch those mouse clicks when encountering any web page. It's far too easy to click a redirected link and end up with a cryptolocker exploit ... particularly if you haven't maintained an external backup like you should as a matter of routine.
If you need support, get someone you trust even in the presence of computer services that are largely inflated on the cost side. Expect to drop some cash; often more than you might expect.
Acquire knowledge of simple maintenance procedures and exploit preventive measures. They will go along way to keep yu safer over time. I recommend the malwarebytes software and personal firewalls available for free. Just be sure of the download source ... they too can be problematic.
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- June 21, 2018
- Summer Solstice 2018
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So it's been real hot of late and today we have the first day of Summer. Running into the high 90s with the heat index well into the hundreds I have been working that HVAC and dehumidifier in an effort to control temperatures to a more tolerable level.
Summer solstice 2018 in Northern Hemisphere went down at 6:07 am EST today Thursday, June 21
This solstice marks the onset of summer, as well as the longest day of the year — June 21 in the northern hemisphere and December 22 in the southern hemisphere.
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- June 21, 2018
- World Humanist Day 2018
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World Humanist Day is a secular celebration of humanity.
It is a time for frolicing in the woods naked and making quick like a bunny with your favorite town pump.
It's about people and things pagan and fraught with those aspects of "humans are everything" and all else is nothing.
It is a solstice celebration where symbolism of coming out of the darkness and into the light represents the transition from ignorance to enlightenment.
Only problem is the focus ... too many trying to ritualize and influence the masses with a seedy spin on what people are all about in the total absence of boundaries.
If only this man made movement were worth the effort being shoved into it.
The doctrine centers on human interests or values — particularly a philosophy allegedly rejecting the supernatural ...
Until you start getting into the rituals — where the emphasis is placed on an individual's dignity and worth coupled with the capacity for self-realization through reason.
Too often this movement appears to transmorgify humans into those deviant liars call democrats, so called "progressives", the followers of George Soros, and other humans who lay waste to the earth in pursuit of their particular spin on humanity.
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- June 20, 2018
- Altered States
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From time immemorial man has assumed intoxication with various substances primarily as a form of recreation. These substances which provide escape have been many and varied ranging from various liquors and other alcoholic concoctions to cannabis and even the exotics like datura, salvia divornum, peyote, psilocybin, and a host of other means toward what is claimed to be elevated consciousness and/or the simple copping of a buzz.
Of late there has evolved industrialized intoxication utilizing substances like drain cleaners and solvents to produce high powered drugs of dubious quality made by amateur 'chemists' with many disastrous results from their use. These include freebase cocaine, the dreaded 'crack', and methamphetemine, ecstasy, the so-called "bath salts" and other chemical means to escape the surly bonds of reality.
The issue with all of these drugs, designer and engineered alike are those consequences such as the recent 'bath salts' epidemic with persons ingesting things not meant to travel metabolic pathways much less enter into synapse formation and activities of daily living ...
Now we have two newer modalities for altered consciousness in the form of 'alcohol smoking' with people breathing in fumes of concentrated ethyl alcohol via mechanical means for a mainline approach to pulmonary intoxication and 'vaping' whereby individuals intake a concentrated cigarette chemical laced vapor of nicotine, flavors, and other chemicals instead of lighting up and puffing on cigarettes, cigars, pipes, and so forth.
The issue, as with all the others remain those consequences which go unrealized, unrecognized, unsubstantiated and unintended. The means and the ends are progressively incongruent ...
Expand your consciousness only to have less of it over time. These dangerous approaches to ingesting alcohol and nicotine are fraught with very real morbidity for those who partake — yet proponents continue to do so at alarming rates.
The sad part about it all is the fact that these mechanisms of "getting off" receive participation with a consent which is sometimes totally uninformed. "Thinking something is safe" does not "make it so".
Investigate before ingesting. The hazards are a real and present danger to life as you know it. It's a tough thing to realize too late the folly of those popular notions which are borne of faulty logic and sold at a convenience store or elsewhere regardless of the sophistication of the purchaser. Caveat emptor: let the buyer beware!
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