DRAGON'S LOYALTY AWARD

Dragon's Loyalty Award presented by M. J. Joachim

This is a great thing that has been bestowed upon me. By accident, or as collateral serendipity, or something like that. Lemme explain. Last year, I took part in a blogging challenge at the spur of the moment, rather like I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) last year, and actually "won" both, by finishing. The other challenge, for those not in the know, is the A-to-Z Challenge, where, during the month of April, you write a short post every day starting with the letter "A" and finishing up with "Z". It works out because every Sunday during the month, it is "dark" (a musician's and actor's term) wherein you don't post or write on that letter. If you finish the challenge, you get a  nifty badge that you display on your blog, which I did, much like the one I got for NaNoWriMo in 2013. You also get some street cred for finishing the damned things, because you gut out the writing blocks and all the inherent other stuff, like. . . uh, life. 

Two years ago, I wrote exactly 1637 words for NaNoWriMo and quit in total misery, because I was in the throes of undiagnosed Parkinsonism and that shit ain't fun. I've been able to take everything else thrown my way, but that was truly debilitating, both mentally and physically. Now, that I'm under treatment (some people wish I weren't as I am busy making their lives a merry Hell for past indiscretions, but I was too sick) I feel 20 or 30 years younger. I believe in the quality of persistence over time and it applies to all things, so maybe this is a good award for me. Dragons live forever. 

So, too, do challenges, and friendships. This is my second year on the A to Z Challenge and I am proud to be a member of #teamDamyanti. I did have a bit of confusion over this award, which is nothing new with me. I've done such jack-a-nape things like follow my own self on my own blog, when I was trying to answer a reader's comment and argued with myself under the pseudonym of Andi-Roo over suicide, when I performed a hurried cut-and-paste job, that was really just a cut-and-paste-paste. That floated around in the cyber sphere for several hours before I caught it and fixed it. Andi's response? "Ha ha ha! Girl! You crack me up!" Of course, there's always the time I thought I was doing good for the homeless in my area, in a post, that had a horribly juxtaposed picture: 

Admittedly, some of the stuff the ex-cons at FSJ, my old homeless shelter, used to concoct between pinochle games looked worse than this, -- scrunched-up cheetos, ramen soup noodles and anything else dumped into a single-serving size potato chip bag, add water and eat with a spoon and called "goulash -- this was NOT on purpose!

I'm legally blind and have a very weak right eye, and my left eye has dark cast that makes it hard to see and read. Sometimes I have to read things 8 or 12 times, or come back and give it a go another day. I've been legally blind for 10 years, so am used to this, but it makes for some interesting interpretations and I tend to "skim" a  lot of text. So, today, I just realized that M.J. Joachim had awarded the Dragon's Loyalty Award to the entire Team of Co-hosts and their Minions, of which I am one. Color me. . . confused?

No, I'm not. Well, okay, kinda sorta. I mean, I just show up and try to do what I'm told. It is an honor and I have to tell 7 things about myself, then award this to 15 bloggers and visit them and pass on the love. Consider it done, M.J., and thank you so much for this award!

I started playing the violin at age 11, but realized my mistake and switched to viola at age 15. I did not pick up another violin until the age of 45, when some idiot in Tampa hired me to play the violin on a gig, while I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina and had a free week. I guess all the other violinists between Charlotte and Tampa died or left town that week. I had to rent one for the gig and I rented the worst thing I could find in the hopes that I would never be hired to play another violin again. It didn't work. More idiots hired me to play the violin. I still hate the violin. The only thing worse than the violin, is playing Mozart on the violin; that right there, is Hell in a barrel. Give me Beethoven, or better yet, Shostakovich, or something with lots and lots of 16th notes, except for the slow parts; I love slow parts and can e-mote like a mo-fo and have a gorgeous sound. Or rather, I should say, Wolf has a gorgeous sound.

I own a viola that was "born" 10 years after Beethoven's death in 1827. My Florenus is of the Bolognese school of fiddle-making and was built in 1837. His name is "Wolf" and he was named by the luthier who appraised him and insured him. I've owned him since I was 19, and he's lasted longer than any of my marriages. He's a much better partner, too. At 177 years old, he's considered a young adult in the fiddle world. 

Wolf's hand-carved scroll; a trademark is the crudeness of the work; the House of Florenus is known for it. It certainly doesn't hurt the sound. His 2-piece back is "matched" up; 2 "tiger stripes" run down either side of his seam.

 

 My viola bow was "engineered" and built by an aeronautics engineer out of Germany. Many modern bows are now built by former engineers and their sons. In the old days, bow-makers, like Tourte, Vuillame and Withers observed birds and watched the shapes of their wings as they flew. The wood is pernambuco.

The 2nd Liston-Ali fight, which secured Ali's place in the history books. Ali's trainer, the late Angelo Dundee took time out to talk to this boxing fan when he was working a young fighter in Tampa, circa 1999. This sport is rich in history, heart, love and tragedy. It is Shakespeare on a 20-foot canvas rectangle.

 

I am a HUGE boxing fan. Boxing is the quintessential art of physical and mental abilities melded together. Boxing history and lore is some of the most fascinating in the world, and the very best boxers possess the minds of chess-masters and the quickness of cats. The fighters have the hearts of lions and are some of the kindest people I have ever met. Boxers do not fight out of anger, but they practice an old and gladitorial sport that has lost relevancy in the modern age. Much of the arm movement and pronation is echoed in the musical world, as is the pace of a Championship Match. I've met many of my musical colleagues at boxing matches.

My only other secret is this: my psychiatrist, who is also an internist calls me his "Google" for all things "Parkinsonism" (I explained the DaTScan process to him). When I started to exhibit overt symptoms, without knowing what I had, I started to learn, from what I could glean on the internet, my own primary care physician and from support groups on Facebook and Twitter (I only had Medicaid, which did not pay for any Neurology testing or medication, at the time). My greatest source of information is YumaBev who has had Parkinson's Disease for many years, and is a dear, wonderful friend, and such an inspiration! I have Parkinsoism, or essential tremor, or "Parkie Lite" as I am calling it, for I exhibit every one of the symptoms, yet my substantia nigra produce Levadopa, thus I am on a much different drug regimen. But, as is my wont, I faced it head-on and went back over my own family's history and believe my mother suffered from it, as well, which would speak in favor of e.t., as that is a "familial tremor" and therefore, inherited. We are now facing the idea that this may also be altered by certain protein combinations, or by gene therapy. 

That's pretty much all I have to say about me; I still get to play my fabulous Wolf without it sounding like a machine gun, although my performing days are behind me.

If you have NOT participated in the A-to-Z Challenge before, I urge you to try it! It's so much fun and you'll get to meet bloggers from all over the world. If you want to plan your challenge around a theme, please, please please, contact any one of us at #teamDamyanti, or sign up here:

A-to-Z Challenge

TECH TUESDAYS -- KEEPING YOUR PC OR LAPTOP IN TOP-TOP SHAPE FOR WORK

A typical clan conversation in SpiRitZ_CC on Runescape whilst skilling

 As you can see by the above, I have a very busy life and do many important things, usually at the same time. The key to being able to being a successful multi-slack-er, uh, multi-tasking individual is making sure my computers are running happily along, with no hiccups. We addressed the downloading weasely programs problem last week, but just how often do you all clean out all those stupid *.tmp files, run Disk Cleanup (in Windows XP, Vista and 7) and defragment your disk?

Ideally, this should be done at least once a month, and with the newer releases of Windows, you have the option of transforming your file system from FAT (File Allocation Table) to NTFS (New Technology File System) and is run on all systems utilizing Windows 3.1 server and higher. The system is more robust and scalable, therefore more forgiving of errors on the hard-drive, where files are stored. In the past, FAT was the standard and a computer with Windows 3.1 client would have to have the *.tmp files deleted, and the disk would have to be defragged about once a week, to keep it running optimally.

So, now that the history lesson is behind us, here is what you can do to keep your little monster running at peak performance.

Start by making sure all programs are closed, including any browsers and chat windows. Go to your Windows Start in the lower left hand corner and select "All Programs". Then, select Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup. You'll bring up a window that looks like this:

The Default Drive is C: unless you've partitioned your drives yourself. If this is the case, you don't need my help. Press "OK" to continue.

You can pretty much delete any files on this list, unless you have a burning need to look at the hex dump of your last application/system crash. Trust me, it makes for extremely boring reading. Select a bunch of boxes and click "OK".

This screen will give you a chance to get rid of "Crusaders from Outer Space" that you downloaded in 2011 for free and the kids played once. You will also probably find that stupid "Free Greeting Card" program that wasn't free and has been nagging you for the last 4 years. You can annihilate it from "Programs and Features" too, as well as from your Control Panel, which amazingly enough is called "Programs and Features". 

System Restore and Shadow Copies should be approached with CAUTION. Not all versions of Windows automatically create a new system restore, every time a change is made to your system, i. e., adding or removing a program. BEFORE doing anything here, if you're trying to free up space and speed up your computer, MAKE SURE you have at least one System Restore created, or your data backed up somewhere. Most PCs come with 2 drives; C and D. D contains the "shadow" drive which is the mirror image of your Windows program that was put there when the system was loaded. It does NOT contain your pictures of your kids, or cats, or receipts, videos of Grandma on her floaty in the pool, so approach with caution, or skip it, if you're not sure that you should remove ANY System Restores. Better safe than sorry!

Once you have all of your options click "OK". 

The computer goes off and does this "dancing baloney" thing, while the little brush swirls on top of the disk. I guess Bill Gates thought we were too dumb too figure out that if the whole bar is green, the bitch is done. Enough editorializing. At least, it's not "Bob the Paper Clip" from Word. He creeped me right the hell out!

Now, that that arduous chore is done, it's time to run Disk Defrag, or Disk Defragmentation. Briefly, when the computer is opening and closing files and performing operations, it "seeks" for information on your hard drive, analogous to an old 33 1/3 turntable. In the days of FAT, the "stylus" or "arm" would read the information and and write it to any available space, regardless of whether or not that space was contiguous to information that was similar to its neighbor. 

Think of waking up living next door to a family of people and coming home to find out that you live next door to a family of cats. It gets really bad when your home is moved across town to the city Zoo and you're cheek-by-jowl with a family of monkeys! But that is how data is picked up, used, transformed and saved, and not always in the same place. In time the files fragment and need to be neatly scooped together and made contiguous again. "Disk Defrag" does that. In XP, you can run a report first and I will say this: Windows LIES! Big fat LIES! Any fragmentation over 2% should be corrected. This will prevent a hard crash and damage to the drive itself.

I stand corrected. Windows 7 does have the ability to run a "report" but there are no statistics, percentages, or number of stacks, so I tend to not trust it; but then, I worked for IBM, so anything Microsoft is suspect. Did I mention Windows lies? Don't get me started on Apple.

So, in Windows, you got to Start > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defrag. If you are doing this for the first time, do it before you go to bed, or at a time when you do not have to use your computer for several hours. The last time I did this was on the 19th of February, 2014 and I think when it was done, it just went away, no message, no nothing. Typical Microsoft. So there you have it!

Next week, I'm going to look at some of the issues that plague users the most on Google and Chrome and see if we can't make some headway on some of the thornier issues that trouble users. If anyone has any ideas for future posts, or needs help, please feel free to comment, or drop me a line, here.

TECH TUESDAYS - NEW FEATURE! - (AT LEAST FOR NOW)

My attitude about "spoofware" or malware disguised as "helpers".

I yap a lot about music and I haven't talked much about computers lately. They're my second and abiding love behind the exploration of sound and the organization of it that is music. For what is really at the very bedrock of computers and their operations? Numbers. Numbers and the orders of their operations. But this is in the abstract and I am here to talk about something that is just a giant P.I.T.A. (Pain In The Ass)

I am being delicate, because this is the kind of thing that has me foaming at the mouth, not that I am too far from that state of mind generally anyway, but this is something that hits consumers and people who are not all the familiar with two things; one of them being, computers in general, and the other being, the absolutely sordid ways in which people who should know better will take advantage of consumers. The innerwebz is a dangerous place, and just because you're on a safe site doesn't mean you're entirely safe.

I'm an experienced computer user and then some. Beyond then some. I build virtual machines and run Backtrack, which is what hackers work with then they are learning the craft. I am on the fence as far as being a "white" or a "black" hat. Unfortunately, you'll never know until it's too late. I rebuild computer systems from the ground up around here for my neighbors continually, because they blunder onto some idiot site and end up with a spoof screen that threatens them with prosecution from the FBI, and I have a formidable set of tools that allow me to bring their systems back to life. When I worked at IBM, one engineer, in awe at some fix I cobbled up, proclaimed that I "practiced the Dark Arts!" No boast, but I understand computers; the curtains, carpet and furniture (software) may change, but the foundations (logic) remains the same.

That being said and to keep this short, and to illustrate a problem I run into continually, but know how to stop cold, I want to talk about a few things that less-savvy computer users are aware of: spoofing, fraud and "over the transom" malware.

Now, "spoofing" refers to a branding of a product that is not the real thing. It's the cybersphere's definition for counterfeit and in this case, it is Mozilla's Firefox that is being spoofed. For the time being, I am using FF to write my posts, because, Google will not allow my to insert images without using their f'ing Cloud Drive and I have my own back-up, thank you. But that's another story and I want to stay on task. 

Today, as I was trying to look at my stats before posting something else, I had written last week, I was "prompted" by Mozilla that my browser was out of date. All well and good. I clicked on the download button and saved the file to my Download folder. I closed my browser and navigated to the folder and saw this:

This is what I would expect to see for a normal Firefox update.

I ran the download through my AVG and Spybot programs before clicking on download, but after clicking on download, this is what I saw:

Admittedly, I was suspicious because the UAC (User's Access Control) screen prior was from "Premier Downloads" and not "Mozilla or Firefox". The download is also verified with Verisign™, which speaks badly for them, but I proceeded, knowing what was to come. This screen appeared, with no FF branding, and the screen was very small and hard to read. I clicked "Accept".

Even though Firefox and Search Protect** are mentioned together in the same sentence, this is not an endorsement! Again, the writing and screen are very small. In the lower left-hand corner is the option to install Search and Protect and it's already selected. I de-selected it and clicked "Accept".

I've already pulled up Chrome by this time and am typing in "Search and Protect" in Google. Then, I see this:

**search protect become searchprotect in Google

Now, I have two more search perimeters: "Browser Safeguard**" and "RocketTab". I add these to my Google search and hit "Enter". 

**browser safeguard becomes browsersafeguard in Google

I don't have to look any farther than this to know that this is what is known as "malware," and while not necessarily a virus or a trojan, it can hijack your system, or re-direct you to places you do not wish to go. Sites like CleanMyPC.com will advertise as free and then after the first "cleaning" will want money to continue the service. All of this is an unnecessary expense to consumers.

This is where this particular "spoof" originates from. As I said, just because this guy says he is protected by Verisign™ that means nothing, and is no imprimatur of honesty. Once a consumer is caught up into this, they will be hounded into paying, and will continue to get advertisements and unwanted spam. Mozilla is "openware" which means anyone can write apps for it, so if you use it, you have to be very diligent about what you download. However, the honest developers advertise their plug-ins or widgets as such and don't try to disguise their apps as Firefox itself!

Here are a few key things to follow when downloading any updates, whether for drivers, browsers, JAVA (which should be abandoned ASAP, it is unnecessary and is a horrible place! Known for bugs. It is what we termed a "bug-patch," or "bug-farm" at IBM and Verizon, more and more HTML5 apps are coming out. JAVA is strictly for Apple and was never meant for PC and DOS-based systems) and even operating systems, as Windows updates are not always necessarily. Remember, Windows and Microsoft lies!

  

• 1. Save the file you are downloading.

• 2. Before running the install, close all programs that are running, including your browsers.

• 3. Scan the downloaded file, preferably with something like AVG and either malwarebytes and/or Spybot. One scans for viruses, the other scans heuristically, for trojans. NOTE: They will NOT tell you that a download is MALWARE necessarily! You have to use your judgment, after this!

• 4. If you DO NOT see an authentic branding for the product itself, halt the installation immediately and delete the setup.exe file from your Download folder.

There. . . Now it's gone on to Software Heaven!

In Windows 7, you can right-click on the icon > Properties > General. Here is where I found that the program is "blocked". Which means nothing to Windows, because. . . Microsoft. Microsoft doesn't even see the spoof as it tells us this is "Firefox_Setup". Microsoft is like your elderly aunt who warned you not to drive all over town without gasoline, because she didn't understand how cars worked. I rest my case.

I already know this is at best a headache; but at worst? This can cripple a system and force a rebuild. I make no apologies for the fact that I live in a low-income neighborhood, but if it's a dangerous neighborhood, it's also a neighborhood full of proud grandmas and grandpas who have oodles of pictures of their grand kids saved to their desk tops. To our credit, my partner in this little enterprise and I have yet to lose a single precious moment. 

But this today, is a special kind of forgery, a spoof. I suspect this cat could be shut down easily and arrested, for he is not only spoofing, but blatantly using Firefox's brand to mask his malware and that's fraud. I've run these things down, but since the FBI doesn't have me on the payroll, let them pursue it and since I'm so damn lazy, I'm not even filling out reports anymore; I just send them links. I am just doing my bit to let my readers know that all of this is out there and you need to be damn careful. Next week, I think I'm going to put out some tutorials for maintaining your PCs, and laptops, Windows only, to start. 

I don't do anything with Apple products and thus have no use for JAVA. I keep my phones, Kindles and mobile stuff completely separate from my home devices, but that is okay, I'm pretty much a shut-in, anyway, and there is no need for me to synchronize stuff. At this juncture, iPads, iPods and PCs really don't mix. I hope Microsoft wakes up and dumps the Surface. Now, I'm editorializing.

As a side note, and a bit of hilarity, while I was pulling together the information for this post, I ran across an old nemesis, BrokenControllers.com. A while back, they stole a post of mine, "Playing the Violin, and How to Avoid It," and sold it on their website. I was alerted to this by another blogging buddy, of which I have legions! This is rather ironic and to me pretty funny, since I've never earned a penny for my writing. Enjoy my take on the violin, but take my advice on downloading anything, even from a supposed trusted sight to heart!