TECH SATURDAY, BECAUSE ON TUESDAY, STUFF HAPPENED – KILLING AN UNWANTED OR FAILING PROGRAM (THREAD) IN MICROSOFT

Where the Cable Cars really DO go half-way to the stars. . .

A few weeks back, I got my panties in a wad, because some idiot hax0r came up with a terrible scheme to “spoof” the public and buy his stuff, which was worthless and bug-ridden and a security threat. While that in itself was not particularly dangerous, his method for doing so was, and I, being ever alert to such chicanery, decided to start “Tech Tuesdays” for people who aren’t necessarily all that familiar with what’s under the hood of the family time-waster. 

There’s a reason for this; I live in a strange neighborhood, that’s one-half ‘bangers and ‘hos and the other half sweet grannies and their grandkids. Then, there are folks like me, who have, shall we say, “interesting and storied pasts” and live rather comfortably between the two. My business partner is a former DOD employee who mustered out after the start of the second Gulf War. He’s my hardware guru. I have been in the business long enough and traveled the back alleys and by-ways of the computer universe to keep abreast of the threats and oddities and transmogrifications of various software worms, viruses and Trojans to keep the little old grannies and their kiddies safe.

I host a network called “FBI Surveillance Van” for all the would-be internet thieves near me (It's protected by a hexi-decimal cypher, so unless Einstein has been reincarnated as a crackhead, I'm safe) . The CIA is going to be setting up shop soon. I love to keep ‘em guessing. Anyway, after the nasty “spoof” found here, I decided it would be a nice thing if I just put up some simple things for folks to help keep their own systems free of mice, lice, tics and bugs. I can’t help you with Microsoft; it’s a giant bug-patch, all unto itself. I don’t touch Apple. It’s a JAVA nest of Hell and I hate their processors. Call me a Luddite, but I use no smart-phone, however, I’m home most of the time.

Today, I wanted to talk about what happens when something just stops, goes into a business loop, contemplates it's navel, refuses to run, or crash completely, and just sits there, eating up your CPU, or Central Processing Unit. This is where all of the instructions are carried out; the literal brain of your computer. You can have the cleanest, leanest, meanest system in the world and if your Candy Crush Client (why?) seizes up, you are going to sit there until Doomsday, waiting for the bitch to do anything. I don't care of you have an AMD Quad Core or an INTEL hoo-ha processor, that brain is going to churn and churn over some stupid command, caught in an endless, infinite, "do loop". 

While not necessarily the fault of the gaming code within Candy Crush, certain outside elements on your system itself, will produce "do loop" results. Or, knowing Candy Crush, it's just shitty programming (again, why?). The one executable command will repeat into infinity, unless you, the weary and aging user, step in to halt the bitch. 

Here are the simple steps for that; I actually used SETI@home for the demonstration, because, they are astronomers, not programmers, and after you make SETI 'snooze', there is no way to halt the client. In my case, I 'snooze' first, because I do NOT want to corrupt my data, so I suspend the operation:

Once I see that red bar to the left of SETI@home v7, I know my work is saved and I can continue.

courtesy: Cracked.com Photoplasty        

Unlike Scotty here; the poor bastard in the Transporter never knew what hit him.

Aight! Fun time over! Now, do a RIGHT mouse click on your Windows task bar at the bottom of your screen, or at the side. You're going to be looking for "Task Manager".

It works in Windows Vista and 7. To get to it in Windows XP, use keyboard strokes <CTRL> + <ALT> + <DEL> at the same time, and select "Task Manager". I don't know nothin' about no Windows 8. Windows 8 looks like a pretend OS. Screw Microsoft. 

Windows Task Manager Processes screen shows all of the "threads" of the applications you are running, or more aptly, not running at the time. Look for your offender and highlight it. Click "End Process".

You will always see this message; if you clicked on something else by mistake, and the process is crucial to the running of your system, Windows will NOT allow the killing of the thread to take place!

Once I "kill" the boinc.exe process, all subordinate processes will die as well. You can do the same with Chrome, or any application, but ALWAYS kill the *.exe. It is a cleaner way to exit the program and you lessen the chance of corrupting any *.dll files or any other subordinate files. 

That's all there is to it. Of course, if it happens continually, shoot me a line, or try closing other programs before running whatever it is that freezes on you. I can't help you with your Candy Crush addiction. Level 70? My, my, my, my, my.

Don't forget! March 21st is the date for the Great Theme Reveal! The A-to-Z Challenge is almost upon us and you don't want to be caught theme-less! Check us out at #teamDamyanti on  the A-to-Z Challenge Blog! I am one of the fabulous Damyanti's assistant's this year, along with my great team members, Vidya Sury, Anna Tan, Samantha Geary-Jones, Guilie Castillo Oriard, Csenge Zalka, and Jemima Pett, who at this very moment has a post about her own Theme Reveal!

  

 

#ROW80 SUNDAY CHECK IN – FUN WAYS TO CONFUSE OUR NEWLY-HATCHED POLICE STATE

I'm not even going to try and put lipstick on this pig; from Techdirt comes this article, “Creating Chilling Effects on Speech is aFeature, Not A Bug, Of the Surveillance State.” Regarding Free Speech and written by Mike Masnick. As a tech article, it starts out with the usual blah-blah, but this caught my eye, “implicit in our assumption is that these “costs” are things that are negatives of the program (kinda like a bug.) Others would point out that for those in power, that's not so much a cost as a benefit. It's not a bug, or an unintended consequence, but a “feature.” By the way, an update or a patch is also a bug, just not one that spies on you, in most cases. Or maybe it does.

On July 11th, 2013, Microsoft granted access to the NSA and FBI for Outlook, SkyDrive and Skype

Yeah, I get that, in 2 ways. Calling something by another name makes it something else. Not. A bug is a bug. But, hey, if it's Microsoft? Microsoft is nothing but a HUGE bug patch, along with JAVA, ORACLE and all the other half-assed software companies that are raking in big bucks for shitty software. I am not bitching; I have a cottage industry going in fixing crap you never got right in the first damn place!

"When email isn't enough for us to get our nosy little mitts on your information," would be 

truth in advertising.

The author then goes on to write about the “chilling” affect this has been on free speech, not just as a consequence, but as a motive. Even Peggy Noonan, describing a conversation with longtime civil liberties advocate Nat Hentoff, writes that “the inevitable end of surveillance is self-censorship.” Well, since I've been in a homeless shelter and mixed it up with different sorts, I tend to NOT self-censorship; a lifetime of it, pretty much fucked up my personal life. As long as I don't foment treason, I can say any damn well thing I want, under the 1^st Amendment, and so can you, if you're a U. S. citizen.

Also, at TechDirt, the July 11^th 2013 headline was regarding the “Latest Leak Shows Microsoft Handed the NSA and FBI Unencrypted Access to Outlook, SkyDrive and Skype. Even though I hardly think Microsoft has the warm fuzzies for the ABC agencies, we're talking about Microsoft. I truly believe they don't their ass from a hole in the ground. IBM worries me, as they made a deal with the Nazis in the early 40s that hardly anyone talks about. And yeah, I've worked for them both and know the chicanery they are capable of. Remember too, that I hunted down rogue servers at IBM, back when no one thought it was a big deal. This was in 1997. When I worked for Verizon, I didn't have that type of job, but we did have computers up on the towers on 9/11, and they were still transmitting signals for weeks, until their batteries finally died. Shivery stuff.

Anyway, if were being told it's not a “bug” but a “feature” how fucking stupid do the NSA, FBI think we are? Wait, don't answer that. We gave up it all up with a stroke of a signature in 2001, when Bush, Jr., signed the Patriot Act. Obama re-signed and expanded on some things the government can do, with no warrants, no knock, no nothing. President Obama is our first technically savvy president and understands the ramifications over time of what this all means. We put up with Joseph P. McCarthy's nonsense, list-waving, his 238 or 149 names, whatever, of known members of the American Communist Party. Until Joseph Welch chastised during the first of the televised Army-McCarthy hearings. Senator McCarthy and his lists and career went poof!

People who say, “I don't care who listens to me, I have nothing to hide,” are full of shit and let me tell you why. 99% of them have nothing the NSA, the FBI, or the CIA cares to hear, but that is not the point. We, as Citizens of the United States have and inalienable right to privacy. If an outside government agency wishes to breach that privacy, they MUST produce a warrant. It doesn't matter if it regards coming into your home, reading your mail, email, searching your car, requesting certain documents and wiretapping your phone. Interestingly enough, 5 amendments come into play here, the 1st, 3rd, 4th (especially for wire-tapping) 9th and the 14th amendments. I am not even going to get into Habeas corpus, which is sort of a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

So, in actuality, these things trump stupidities like the Patriot Act, at least in my book, and here is where the fun comes in. Get yourself a batch of Facebook friends, preferably some from Russia, Kazakhstan, or Tajikistan and the Middle East. Chat back and forth and then exchange jokes and stuff. Misspell lots of your words and talk about your dogs, pets and hobbies. For instance, mention that great WIRE-HAIRED TERROR that your mom bought you. Swap recipes. The ones for bombe glaceé, or bombe Alaska might just perk up some ears.

That thing can won't be around long enough to explode. It looks delicious!

Talking in pig latin, or maybe esperanto is probably good. I don't think the NSA has any algorithms for that yet. Better yet, before posting on FB run your text through several translators. It works like that stupid game “Telegraph,” where a bunch of kids would sit in a circle and someone would pick a phrase and whisper it to his/her nieghbor. So, we have this sentence that I started out with in English and ran through several different languages before going back to English:

Kid 1: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. – English

Kid 2: قفز الثعلب البني السريع فوق الكلب الكسول – Arabic

Kid 3: Le quick brown fox saute par dessus le chien paresseux – French

Kid 4: wyqfz ạltẖʿlb ạlbny ạlsryʿ fwq ạlklb ạlkswl – Georgian

Kid 5: wyqfz ALTHʿポンドạlbnyạlsryʿFWQạlklbạlksw – Chinese (simplified)

Kid 6: wyqfz ALTH ʿ பவுண்டுகள் ạlbnyạlsry ʿ FWQạlklbạlkswl – Tamil

Kid 7: wyqfz alth ʿ ポンド ạlbnyạlsry ʿ FWQạlklbạlkswl – Czech

Kid 8: wyqfz alth ʿポンドạlbnyạlsryʿFWQạlklbạlkswl – Norwegian

Kid 9” wyqfz alth ʿ ポンド ạlbnyạlsry ʿ FWQạlklbạlkswl – German

Kid 10: wyqfz alth ạlbnyạlsry ʿ ʿ ポンド FWQạlklbạlkswl – English

Fun!

This is very much like the crap that Bing comes up with. I like making up my own stories.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-most-baffling-subtitles-in-foreign-action-movie-history/

As always, my undying gratitude and love to Mr. Brockway at Cracked.com

And that is how you play “Telegraph.” This would be great and send the NSA haring off into all kinds of directions, and wondering what sort of nefarious things are going on. I plan on doing this, as I already know I'm on all sorts of lists, ala Joseph P. McCarthy dating back to my father's non-escapade, when 2 of his employees somehow managed to smuggle out 2 personnel carriers and then sold them to the Saudis, back when they weren't our friends. So, we got to put up with the FBI showing up at all kinds of hours, replete with sunglasses at night. My dad used to pick me up after school; it was my senior year, and then we'd spend hours aimlessly driving around, not even bothering trying to rid ourselves of the remoras in our wake. I joined the American Socialist party in the 80s. President Reagan was in office, so not looking very kindly upon anti-capitalists, I'm sure I went in the barrel for that.

Tampa has one of the largest presences outside of D. C. because of MacDill Airforce Base. That Base was the center for the prosecution and direction of the Iraq War in 2003. I guess this is Eric Holder; all FBI agents look alike to me.

Anyway, we have inalienable rights, per the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and those are being abrogated and this is a fearful thing because, when one right is stepped on, then 2 are stepped on. When we get to Writ of Habeas corpus, which I fear has already been violated, we're toast. We've lost and we have nothing to protect us then. No matter. I have no one, other than JC, and he understands this very clearly. He also knows that I will not let this happen, if at all humanly possible. We need to wake up, get over the bullshit. People breastfeeding in public, so what? People get outraged about stupid temporal things, but this is hard because it feels like an abstract idea. It isn't.

It's very real, and it's what I call a chromatic failure, because it's at every level of the government and then some. Corporations try to tell people how to vote. That is none of their goddamned business. In one of my Triberr groups, I heard about a Chief who won't share a poster's blog if they don't agree with the opinion. That's fucking censorship and wrong. In closing, we must look to ourselves and not just to what is going on outside. A free society means that all can air their opinions, peculiar or antithetical to ours they may be. That's what liberty is about.

#ROW80 SUNDAY CHECK IN – WHAT DAY IS IT? A LITTLE VIOLA ACTION, HOW NOT TO DO THE DISHES, AND QUICK HEALTH UP-DATE, AND SOME KAFKAESQUE MASQUED BALLE FROM THE HEALTH CARE-INDUSTRIAL-MILITARY COMPLEX.

This title is more along the lines of the sort of titles I created when I posted about all of my real homeless adventures. As this is a mixed bag of my confuse-a-what™ style, which I must admit are some of my favorite things to write about. A mixed bag of random whatever. Since I spend most of my life being amused to random whatever and the attendant stupidities I, and my fellow humans commit with abandon, all to avoid the existential dread of shuffling off this mortal coil, since I don't think a cure for death is right around the corner, which would really put a strain on the “sandwich generation.”


I have noticed lately that there are several different interpretations of where we all are on the whole time line thing. I'm not talking about the differences between the Russian Orthodox Calendar, which is 12 days ahead, or 25 days behind the Western calendar. I'm talking about what moment in time we are all currently existing in. We don't seem to be able to agree on the most basic of measurements, such as, minutes, hours, and the ever important, day. Forget the Hebrew calender. There is a misapprehension there, that he who has the most years, wins, or something. Last time I looked, they were up in the 5000 + and counting.

Maybe in the Tip.it universe; I'm pretty sure Saturday was July 27th, 2013. Glad to see I'm not alone.

JC is most definitely south'rn and when he starts out “the other day, that guy, you remember, honey?...” we could be talking about 3 months ago, some teenager cashier-girl at the Checkers, and, I don't remember anything that happened this morning, so I have my own peculiar concepts of time and people, and just specificities, in general. I spend the better part of every day talking to people, who may be engaged in the most heated of discussions, but not a damned one of them is specific about time. They're a little more correct regarding participants and as to actual events? If I didn't see it, it didn't happen. I just nod and go along. Again, I feel like James Thurber, when I start hearing about Carl, from JC's buddy, Jack, who was locked in the cellar, when his maw went to feed the pigs and she dropped his cell phone, which was hooved to death and Carl nearly starved. I am not sure if Carl is someone's cousin, friend, or someone who was a friend of a cousin, or just a gruesome article on page 4 of the weekly Plant City paper; a rag that still exists. But, I digress.


The kind of time I'm talking about are the clocks or calenders in my own head, and in the heads of my friends, too. This is probably some kind of new disorder and I am sure that clinical trials are being conducted and there will be a pill for it. It will be added to the DSM V, along with “alphabet song” disorder. They have pills for laughing at morbid and mordantly funny stuff and crying at nothing; I thought that was just bad taste, and Drama Queen behavior. My shrink and I howled over that, because ain't nobody gonna take away my fun!

Karma's a bitch; it bit me in the ankle, 'cause I recycled material for a Wednesday check in.

Anyway, the time thing. Being as how I'm lazy and am not anywhere near Facebook, I'll just say this. I thought I was doing my Wednesday Check in, but it was Thursday, but it wasn't . It actually was Friday. Hell's Bells. At least, a fellow ROWer, Lynnette Conroy comforted me and said she had a similar problem. Maybe part of the confusion lies with this new drug I'm on. It tends to slow my thought process a bit, but it sure has slowed down the tremors, so I'm cool with it for now. However, it makes me no less out of it, than before. JC wanted a Dr. Pepper and I was on my way to the kitchen for something, and said I would bring him one.


I walked into the bathroom, shut the door and just stood there for about 3 minutes, wondering why on earth, I was there. I walked back out, went to the living room and sat down to eat. JC said, “What happened to my Dr. Pepper?” Oh. Yeah. Off I go and retrieve it for him. Whatever I wanted or thought I needed must not have been that urgent, because I don't remember coming back with anything else. When you start living your life by “reverse-engineering,” or using some kind of forensics voodoo, it may be times for a keeper. I've spent hours upon hours looking for shit I've misplaced, mostly by “re-enacting the crime scene,” so to speak. I always try to put it back where I know I'll find it, since I can't see it for the most part. As Dr. Phil would say, “How's that workin' for ya.” (I loathe Dr. Phil.)


So, meds are working, even if I'm just as air-headed as ever. I have been able to play my viola, when I'm “on,” and at times, it sounds like the old me. Endurance has to be built, but everything is there just been waiting. Wolf is very happy. This friend of JC's is just perfect. He's never had a private lesson, but know lots about stringed instruments and is a sponge. He damn near made me cry; he said it was an “honor to meet me and agree to help him.” Mind-blowing, but so nice to hear that.

This sounds like a report card. With all the viola-playing and fiddling with computers (I had another sick one to fix for someone) I left Thursday's dinner dishes in the sink, until this evening. I made black beans and rice. JC and I ate all of it (them?) so I left the dishes to soak in the pan, with the lid on. For about 2 1/2 days. We eat simply and fairly healthy and I don't cook that often. So I go to do the dishes and take the lid off this pan, that two bowls, 2 spoons and remnants, mind you, not a half a-serving, just remnants. Or, maybe revenants; undead-dead, because Holy of Holys, Mary, Mother of God, and Christ on a bicycle! When I took the lid off of that pan full of 2 1/2 day-old bean water, it had fermented into something so toxic, I am surprised the sink didn't melt.

Seriously, I half expected the HazMat people to show up, along with SWAT teams and the CDC. Whatever that shit was it would have made splendid tear gas for Riot Control. As a bio-chemical weapon I'm sure it's weapons-grade, because, even after I rinsed the bowls, lid and pot and then washed same, I could still SMELL IT. My ET (essential tremor) leaves me with a very poor sense of smell. But I did find out that my tear ducts and salivary ducts work just swell. So, the lesson here is, “rinse all of your pots, pans, bowls, but DO NOT leave the lid on the pot.”

That was some seriously bad ju-ju there; if I'd dropped the pan, it probably would have exploded.

Before we lurch off to the land of Kafka, I am about halfway through a DOD wipe of another mysterious laptop. I, with my usual derring-don't, of course, snooped all over the thing, before I wiped the drive. Someone's been bad, in a white-collar kind of way, shall we say. Since there are so many different ways to get around Windows laughably stupid “security” devices, it's easy to see what wasn't meant to be seen. Damn, I would so love to do this for reals, as in, a forensics computer analyst. These DOD wipes take hours to do; in essence, the tools erase all data from the hard drive 7 times. There is a complicated matrix used for each wipe. Back in the day, when you “deleted” a file or folder, you could run a global search from a C: prompt, using “?” in place of the first character of the file name. This way you could easily restore Uncle Vinny's recipe for gunpowder, or whatever. The principle is the same, but with additional algorithms to account for any possible loose end.


Once this is done, I'll (we; me and my silent partner) will load Windows 7 (meh) so the customer has a good and safe operating system. I always learn things from stuff like this. So, if I ever earn any illicit money, or want to hatch up a scheme to steal the internet, I know what NOT to do.

This is an actual error. Windows is quite possibly the stupidest operating system, EVER. JAVA and Chrome suck, giant dog balls, too.

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” (“Metamorphosis”) Gah! Franz Kafka is undoubtedly one of the most influential writers of the 20^th century when it comes to existentialism. His writings dealt with and helped to shape the archetypes of alienation, parent-child conflict, characters on terrifying quests and labyrinthine bureaucracies. He was an influence for later writers, like Herbert Marcuse, who wrote “The One Dimensional Man,” although Marcuse was arguing more from the politics of such existence and a socialist one, at that, as he criticized both capitalists and communists. Marcuse championed the outsiders, the minorities of his time and his criticisms with bureaucracies are due to the oppositional nature of personal freedoms such bureaucracies inevitable bring. Enough with the socio-political-lit thing. I've been going through my own state of bug-ology recently. Or we could call it “hot potato,” where I'm the potato. It goes like this:

I am also  watching "Breaking Bad" on NetFlix. The 3rd season episode, "Kafkaesque" is one of the finest things I've ever seen, bar none.

I have a prescription that is ongoing prior to my receiving my Medicare, and my shrink, understanding that I suffer from depression, has always signed off on my paper work, so “LILLY CARES” (that's news to me) can continue supplying me with Cymbalta at 257.00 a pop every month. All of my other meds have been generic and I was with a plan through my grocery store's pharmacy that allowed me to pay 4 to 9 dollars for them.



So, with my active prescription in hand, I tried to get my Cymbalta refilled, 2 weeks ago. The pharmacy couldn't fill it, because it hadn't been added to my drug “formulary,” even though they have the prescription, the need the Dr. Auth#.  They faxed my Shrink's office, who in turn, faxed Lilly. I have about 7 pills left and yes, I DO need them. Sad to say, I have been clinically depressed since the age of 15 or 16. More existential dread. Maybe I was channeling the future me having to deal with the following bullshit.

I am so glad and thankful that I am not suicidal. That has never been an issue with me. It was with my mother. I figure I'm just either too damn dumb or stubborn, or gee, maybe I still have something to contribute, or people to pester; pick 'em.

I kept calling, and going back up to the Pharmacy, and calling the shrink's office. He practices in 2 different locations, so it's hard to get to the receptionist. She passes the buck, saying she faxed Lilly. I call the pharmacy and they got nuthin'. I'm running out of pills.

A week ago last Friday, I had to go to the pharmacy to get some of my other meds refilled (I know, such an exciting life!) and they haven't heard from anyone; no shrink's office, no Lilly. Bupkus. I talked to Dr. Jones, our pharmacist and started crying. Great! The one thing I hate, hate, hate, in the whole world! Crying! Fuck! Crying is for weenuses! I get what I came for and stepped away from the counter.

This might make me cry, but I don't know. I was so blissed-out over a tiger roaring 2 feet from me, I didn't see his buddy on the roof, until he jumped down a nano-second later. I'd probably stand there grinning like a loon, whilst being chomped to death.

I call my shrink's office; it's about 4:25. I talk to the receptionist. She's sounding rather hostile and says, “Look, we faxed the stuff to Lilly, to the Pharmacy, blah blah blah.... okay?” I held still for a minute, and then I said, “No, it's not okay.” I was being honest. I wasn't abusive, I was just being honest. I could have said, “No, it's not all right! I've been fucking depressed since I was 16 years old. My life is in the shitter and I have more ability, talent and drive in EVERYTHING, than you will EVER have in ANYTHING, and I FUCKED it all up!” But, I didn't. She says to me, “Well, maybe I can help, hold please...” and puts me back on hold, where I sit until the phones close at 5 pm, and I am mercifully killed off, telephony-wise.

Now, of course, thank God I'm on medication for my tremors because I was shaking so badly from all of that stupid bullshit. I probably needed a time-out and she deals with a lot of people who are waaaay worse off than I. I make it through the weekend, and on Monday, I get an authorization from my insurance company to be treated by my shrink? WTF? Who contacted them? I didn't. I was told that Big Pharma (i.e. Lilly) was on the hot plate for this, by everyone who wasn't Ely Lilly. I didn't ask for this. 

So, I call my supplemental insurance company and talk to someone named Sonia, who sounds like she should be a Hostess at a Supper Club in Vegas. Easy meat. When I question her regarding the authorization for the Cymbalta, she launches into what has to be one of the most hilarious I-haven't-a-fucking-clue-what-my-job-is-here explanations of all time. I ask why was I sent this letter, as I didn't request it, and I was looking for authorization for the drug Cymbalta, and that I needed no authorization to be seen as an outpatient. That had been handled 18 months ago. “Well," she oozed back at me, "we like to send those letters out from time to time, seeing as how your doctor is dealing in narcotics.”

Maybe I'm not depressed; maybe I just need to stop and look and listen to all the horrendous, stupendously bad bullshit flying around the universe. Because it just makes me cackle like a hyena.

WTF and hold the phone! Really? Seriously?! No shit. Can I get some crystal meth? How about some of that there black tar? Hey, doc, hook me up with some of that ice, I keep hearing about! I almost had a fucking cow on the phone right there. I didn't know whether this was the best kept secret since my PD or not-PD, or just some horribly awry plot line, alá "Breaking Bad." You are damned if you do, double-triple-quadruple any way you look at it. Hilarious. My money is on keep my mouth shut and blog.

Geeze, maybe Gregor Samsa had a good day, after all. Just kidding. I found a coupon for a month's free supply of Cymbalta on Lilly's website and was able to take it and get it filled, since I have a good prescription. I see the head doctor before I runs out, so it's cool and now I can get it fixed with my "authorization letter that lets the doctor give me narcotics." They better be some damn fine narcotics!

#ROW80 – 3RD QUARTER 2013, SUNDAY CHECK IN – MR. WIZARD'S HELP DESK

Ah, the lovely errors from nowhere. They pop up here and there, and everywhere, much like the Scarlet Pimpernel. They don't make a lick of sense and oftentimes, they either don't refer to whatever it was you were trying to do on your computer, or they aren't in anything that looks remotely like English. Some don't even qualify as a planetary language, I would wager, which is one of the very few vices I am heir to. So, I was tickled beyond the beyond (read: mystified-irked) when I received this charming little pop-up:

Nope, wasn't this one, although I've had it before...

Yes, it did encounter a problem. I killed it and it's minions 2 days before. Word was nowhere in sight and was haunting me from the dead...

Once upon a time, before Bill Gates got his greasy little mitts on it, it was a fairly decent program. Word is what we called "legacy" software. Bill bought a good but under-marketed product, screwed it all up and then foisted it upon the unsuspecting masses. I supported it at IBM and in Gastonia, NC and it was always a big, snarled up mess. 

I saw this exactly once on a system in Gastonia, NC when I worked for the PD and promptly disconnected the system from the Citrix network and locked it in a jail cell. That can't be legal, and I sure as hell didn't want it contaminating co-workers, the K-9s and the stray cats who seemed to show up and never leave..

This sounds almost Kafka-esque, or Nietzsche, if you will. One could also make an argument for Camus and Existentialism, or Ellison, "I Must Scream and Have No Mouth," if  one were so well-read and dramatic. Or, it could be the sense of humor these unhuman brutes have developed; scheming, scheming, as so many Cardinal Wolseys.

This is the actual error, or misunderstanding I am receiving. I've gotten to the point where it happens only after a cold boot. If you google this phrase "Your profile could not be, blah blah blah," You will find tons and loads of pissed off, frantic people, who know very little about the architecture of their systems and Google doesn't really seem concerned by this. I think it highly unfair that these people's concerns are not dealt with seriously or in a timely manner. That is the customer service part of me. The software Engineer part of me is just screaming, "FIX THE GODDAMNED THING!" But it's not that easy. No one uses the same platform and now we have iPhones, IPads, Macs, PCs, and gaming systems. There is no "one size fits all" for anything in software. We have not gotten to that point yet. But, the people's concerns should still be addressed. All the work-arounds in the world are not going to cure the problem.

My usual fabulous picture taking.  My desktop, with "Scotland Rising, and Sir Wiliiam Wallace" in the background." No java. Only a Windows framework, and as soon as I know more about Linux and MVWare Workstation, Windows is out.

There are four rules to trouble-shooting for computers. 1. Have you made any changes (added, changed, or deleted software) 2. Does it happen only in one application or does it happen in all applications? 3. Have you rebooted? 4. Are you able to duplicate the problem?

My IBM T-42 laptop, which I tear up regularly.  It's used for "white-hat" hacking and screwing around on, when I'm on the Quad. I have a Gateway in the other room. 

So, I read up on this "error" (which is just really shitty program-writing) on the “forums” that Google provides as this is a Chrome error. Why it happened, I have no idea, because I'm in Chrome all day, and for some reason, Chrome just basically told me to go to hell. These “forums” have a bunch of people bitching and my particular problem is listed and has been around for years. Way to go, Google! Glad you got right on this bastard and fixed it.

Another fix is to uninstall my AVG. Yeah,  as if.

So, what I derive from their “help” is that I'm supposed to navigate my way to %appdata%User\Local Settings\Application Data\Chrome\User Data\ and somewhere in this is supposed to be either a Default folder or a Profile folder. Great. Hooray. Yippee. So, I start pissing around with this and I found out a lot of interesting stuff, none of which had a damned thing to do with Chrome, but it was time for a house cleaning, so I got rid of a bunch of stuff that I never use and come with a pre-loaded system, like this AMD Quad Core I have (I'm getting another.)

At this point, the thing doesn't even look like or act like Windows Vista anymore, which is fine with me. I finally get to the Chrome folder which is nowhere near Application Data, it's under Program Files on my system. I have to kind of sit and look at this and think it through for a minute. While I'm doing this, I reach behind me, and stick my right hand down on the bed. Immediately, a small furry, rumbly cranium proceeds to wallow all over my hand, as Mama pets herself, sort of. She's my "assistant" and hard to resist.

Of course, what pictures of my cat, Mama be complete without my stupid shadow in the way, or a finger in the lens. I am abysmal and have no talent whatsoever when it comes to taking picture of anything. So, when it comes to taking pictures of a live creature, the suckage factor is increased by 144. At least you can see her!

She and I zone for a minute, while I puzzle this through. I have 4 profiles, I can't change them. There are 2 Defaults. Something happened and one is dated earlier today. Bingo. I rename it Default old, and proceed to back out of architecture. It fixed the problem, for about 2 days. It's now back, but it's not a show-stopper. It's giving me what I want though, so the hell with it. I just click through the errors, there are only 2, instead of the 28 I was getting. Seriously though, Google needs to get it's act together. A publishing house that big needs to have rock-solid support and they really don't.

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Oh yeah, goals, I have started putting the memoirs of my life together, starting with from when I was Homeless. I am actually starting from the very moment I realized I had some neurological problem and working backwoad. Typed approximately 1700 words last night. Tomorrow on Monday, I get some sort of diagnosis. I'm going in with no expectations, PD and ET are elusive bitches. So, we'll see!