Spammers at it again! & Password management!

Just when I thought things had settled down here they go again. I took a conscious effort to unsubscribe to all the junk and spam emails I had been getting for a number of years and it worked, for a while that is. I've been trying to track why this happens. From what I can tell, whenever I subscribe to a new website soon after is when it starts. Either these websites are selling data or spammers are scraping the sites for emails. This has to be a hard way to do business. Most people see this junk and just delete it. I used to just ignore it and let it fill up my inbox or spam folder. But, doing so does not do a service to your email provider as they have to keep adding storage or hard drives to their network to keep these messages or emails for you. This can lead to more expense and it is all passed on to the customer, either commercial or individual. Yes, email is free for the most part but your provider will serve you ads more and more the larger they grow. You think that you or I do not make much of a difference if we delete junk emails or not but if you really think about it, we do matter. I am going to keep up my research on this and post my results here. Oh, another was spammers get your email is from the breaches that we read or hear about almost weekly now. Who was breached lately? I cannot keep them all in mind as it is getting to be a normal part of life now. I am getting into the habit of quickly changing my password anytime I read of hear of a breach. So, how do you keep up with all of your passwords? I hope you are not using the same for all websites. That is the absolute worst thing you could do. A good habit in my opinion is to use some type of common theme, something that you can remember. Making the passwords longer than eight characters is the norm now. Then you have two-factor authentication where you are texted and have to input the code that is sent to your phone. Maybe you do not like that extra work though? I particularly have welcomed that method as the websites are going the extra mile to make sure you are not hacked. If you want to take on the full task of password management you can find a password manager like I did years ago. First, do a search for password managers. They are all different and each have their own interface and method. One thing I can tell you is that I have found that open source programs are excellent. This is where groups of programmers are sharing the responsibility of maintaining and improving the program. I settled on a program called, Keepass. Do a search for it. There is regular updates and more than enough options that you or I will never use but it works well. I have been using this for several years now without a hitch. It is free but you can donate to the group or cause if you like. There are even extras you can get to add to this program. One that I found that was a welcome relief is a sync app or script program that allows you to sync or make a complete copy of the data file into a Google Drive file. I have been using this regularly now the last year and what makes it great is that you can get at your password data from anywhere, even on your phone. I should have broken this up into two separate posts. I might do this another time. ...and life goes on!

Incredible...all stats show European visitors...how can this be correct?

Just happened to take a look at my stats here to see how many views I'm getting. Not a whole lot but that's okay. I'm not really promoting this blog at this time. I've just been idling along here with this completely without a path or direction. First motivation when I started this was to do affiliate marketing and try to achieve some source of side income. I haven't been diligent enough. I also feel I haven't come across the right product to market yet. I keep trying though. Distractions are numerous these days. Bitcoin now has a lot of my attention and I'm coming across people every day that are talking about it. Yesterday was one of those days where I met a guy at a Starbucks. Then, last night I meet a guy sitting behind me in a restaurant who I heard mention bitcoin. So, I had to get up and take out my phone to show him my Coinbase portfolio. He gave me a fist bump and we were cool. Now I am teaching people how to get in the game. Where will all of this go? Who knows but it's an exciting time for the world and it's people. Won't you join us?

EU Spammers, give up!

Since viewing a European website my email has been scraped and is now receiving daily spam emails from the EU. If you spammers only knew that you are wasting your time with me. I see them and I delete them. I have been around this old internet since before it got out to the general public. I doubt this post will have any effect the spams but I thought I'd post this for my reference in the future anyway. Google Analytics tell a story and it's coming from the EU and mostly Russia. Screw you if you have nothing better to do.

Good God, It's Been Three Years Since I posted Anything!

I log into my email and see an email from my domain host. I open it and read through it and realize that I don't remember if I pointed my domain name to anything. I open a tab on the browser and enter the domain name. Sure enough, my blog on Blogger appears and the last post is shy about a week of three years old since the last post. I don't know why I bother with this truthfully. I have not put the time into it to figure out how or if I can really make any money off of it. I would have done so much better putting a $1,000 into Bitcoin when I first posted about it and it was around $113. Now it's right around $4,500 and has hit just over $5,000. Oh well. What's the next big thing I'm wondering if there is going to be anything after all that has been done now. Facebook is all the rage and everybody including your grandmother is on there posting a lot of mundane shit that I don't even care to check in on it anymore. People that you have as friends can't even give you a quick 'Like' but they expect you to give them one. Maybe I'll just continue to use this blog to post my notes to myself and to hell with everyone else. People are so self centered anyway. I never wanted to believe that but a long life keeps trying to teach me certain things but I don't want to believe them. I grew up reading about all the good in people but maybe I read the wrong books. There just seems to be so much more evil now in this world that the good is hard to find in all the chaos now. I won't let it get me down. I'll keep fighting. I'll end this post as I don't want to write a book that no one is going to read anyway. If I do write a book it will be with a pen name and not my real name.

Apple Pay and Wallet versus the Old Credit Card Swipe

Apple's big news day was yesterday. iPhone 6 now and an iWatch finally. I have yet to see anyone wearing any smartwatch. I had seen the Samsung Gear watch a couple of months ago when I was in the local Sam's Club. I studied the packaging and the features listed but I was not interested in wearing a watch on my wrist again. It's been over a decade or two now since I have worn a wrist watch. I don't miss the untanned and white stripe on my left wrist. I have to say that I do like the styling of the watch that Apple has put out. Mostly the screen though and what you can see on it. I'm not too keen on the strap itself or whatever you want to call it. I don't think I'll be wearing an iWatch any time soon as I am a fan of Android. I have seen Android come up from the bottom and take over IOS as being in the majority now even though there were a lot of naysayers along the way, I knew it would only be a matter of time. So, on the subject of wallets. I have installed the Google Wallet and have linked it to my bank account and added in a loyalty card. But, in the information for this wallet it states that there are three phones that it is not compatable with and mine was one of them. I will take it with a grain of salt as I know that sometimes information is not updated. So, I will have to just try it out the next time I am at one of those credit card terminals that have the NFC or near field communication readers at the top. You've seen them I'm sure, kind of a blue looking clear plastic thing at the top of the terminal. Now, be assured that a lot of these have never been used and I won't be surprised if I go to use one that it is not activated and the clerk will know nothing about it. I only have to make sure my NFC is turned on before approaching the register. But, here's my point with all of this. The only thing this technology is going to save me is the space in my old leather wallet. No plastic cards to carry around. But, how much time will it take to get the phone app running and make sure I have the correct card that I want use all set to wave across the NFC reader? Maybe we'll have to get used to getting this all ready before it's our turn at the checkout. From what I have been reading of late is the U.S. will be turning to the chip in a card credit card sometime later next year. All the merchants will have to change or upgrade their terminals to accept the new chip cards. Who knows what is going to work best but the NFC better get going or it might be last to the race and end up the loser. Which do you propose to use?

BITCOIN and everything you can do to get in on this exciting new technology and monetary system!

My last post was back in January. I just have not had anything organized in my mind to talk about much less the focus power to put anything in words lately. Pre-occupation with material things is the reason and I will not get into them here. If you have been watching the news you have come across this Bitcoin thing. What the heck is it you may ask. I came across something about it way back now around March of 2013 I think it was. Maybe it was 2012, I just cannot remember now for sure. But, here is the thing. If I had bought some of these Bitcoins when I first got excited reading about it, the price was $113 to $115 each. Over the year the price has been volatile to say the least. It soared to over $1,100 or $1,200 at one time and I thought this was just incredible. I missed the boat as usual with things like this as I procrastinate too much. My problem is I try to get other people interested in stuff that I discover in order that they too might share in my journey of discovery but more often that not they do not take the plunge either. So, I end up being a teacher and never get involved myself. Now yesterday I read an article where the founder of the Xprize has converted some of his gold into Bitcoins. This man is a forward thinking person who has a lot of followers. He has had much success in his life and probably will continue to do so. It is people like this that excite me and motivate me to think that I too can do the same as them if not on a smaller scale maybe. I think we all have it in us but we just do not have the confidence first and the knowledge secondly to take us there. More perhaps on this man later. For now I am going to post that there is a page on Bitcoin.org called, support. There one can find the many links to just about everything there is to do or know to get involved in Bitcoin. One thing that I have been wanting to do is get into mining. Mining bitcoins with a computer can make you free money. How much and how fast depends on the power of your machine and more specifically, the GPU or video card in your rig. As I have delved deeper into this bitcoin thing this is what I have discovered is the secret to mining. Most say you can be more profitable by joining a mining pool. I have read some forum posts that say mining on your own does well too. I would like to try each soon to see for myself what does best. In order to do this I would like to set up two computers with each doing one or the other. Another option I have tossed around is to pay a hosting service to use there virtual servers to do the mining but the question is, will it pay the rent. I have not been able to come across any forum posts or discussions where anyone has offered their experience with this but I did discover one node was using a virtual host near me. I feel that time is of the essence now as the governments have been digging into this and trying to figure out how to regulate it and control it but it is a tough road ahead for them from what I have been reading. Many online retail companys are now beginning to accept Bitcoin for payment. This tells me that there is belief in this new currency system and they are serious about making it work. I had registered myself with a Bitcoin address to send and receive payments but have never tried it out. Here is my Blockchain.info address if you want to send me some of your bitcoin to help further my cause here to enlighten the people of this planet: 1BKkQWFGAvseLQZ9e7oTvxLFrohA1zQCyk Okay, have I got you interested? I believe it is time to get on this bandwagon now before you are the last one and who knows what will happen by then. Will our current dollar currency go down the tubes? Will there be a race to buy into bitcoin and transfer all monetary assests into it? Time will tell of course. For now I would not put all my eggs into one basket of course but we can start with a few at a time and see how it goes. I just saw an article today where Expedia is now accepting Bitcoin. It was not too long ago that I got a Tiger Direct email and they had started accepting Bitcoin. More and more businesses will get into this and you will begin to start seeing ATM machines that provide bitcoin transactions. My last word here today. All along the time I have been researching this bitcoin it has came to my attention that a bitcoin transaction can take some time to confirm. Upwards of twenty minutes was the last I had read about. Nodes in the system is what does the transaction verifications. The more nodes there are the faster the transactions can be verified is what I understand. One has to be aware that the more people who are making transactions can slow the process down if there are not enough nodes joining the system to keep pace. My internal spirit of helping out is begging me to set up a node to help out. I could use one of the two computers that I plan to test the different types of mining that I mentioned previously as a node. I think this is going to be exciting if I can just get going on this. What about you? All comments appreciated!

The Weather and Your Own Personal Weather Station on Weather Underground

Click for weather forecast Do you like the weather? Recently I have been checking the weather a lot here in sunny Tampa Florida. Only to try and find out in advance if I need to cover my three outside plants that are sensitive to a freeze. One is a banana plant and the other two I cannot remember their names even though the neighbor who gave them to me a few years ago, has told me more than once. So, I did cover them all for the second time this year, yesterday. I think the next few mornings were are on a freeze watch so I will take no chances. You see the banner at the top showing the current temperature here near me at a neighborhood nearby. The temperature comes from a PWS or Personal Weather Station that someone has set up. If you do a search for Weather Underground or just input those words together with a dot com at the end you will see a whole different world of weather than you more popular Accuweather or Intellicast weather sites. At Weather Underground you have individuals who have spent money on their own weather stations and take the time to set up a web page where the data and history is recorded for anyone to look at. I have been interested in this for several years now and from time to time I keep coming back to it. One of these days I will find the money to buy one of those Davis Advantage Pro units. For some reason I just want my own weather station so I can check the weather any time from my phone or tablet or from the desktop and from anywhere. How cool would that be? Very cool. I end this post now and hope that maybe if you are interested you will check out the weather from a different angle than you normally do. Stay warm! Here is a link to Davis Weather Products

Typing in all that data into Evite and then you must sign in to send. Oops, now all your hard work is gone!

How many times have you and I done this. We go to a web site and begin typing in all the data to send, let's say an evite. Then it wants you to sign in. In all the haste to get going and get your evite just right and add all the emails, it dumps all your work and you have to start all over again. For crying out loud, when will these webmasters ever give some warning to remind you log in or risk losing all your hard work beforehand. The wife is sitting here and this just happened to her now. Here's something new too in case you haven't seen it. Evite is not free anymore! To send an invitation to up to 50 people it's now $12.00 USD. Remember that old saying, 'Nothing in life is free'. Well, it's getting to be that way again. The days of free are going down the tubes. The wife asked me if she should pay to send these invitations. I reasoned with her that this is the first time in over a year that we will be having a party and to go ahead and spend the twelve dollars. The way we spend money, what is twelve dollars anyway? Logic is out the window these days, even with myself. We are so stressed out and lacking sleep just trying to keep up with our day to day routines anymore. I like to stay busy but sometimes I just want to lay on the couch with the remote in hand and dumb down. It rarely happens anymore. This post is over. But, remember the next time you want to send an evite, it is going to cost you and don't forget to log in first before you do anything.

Coming out and being Gay today, for crying out loud already!

I just happened upon a headline in a USA Today newspaper about a congressman that came out about being gay. My first reaction was a bit of anger. The reason is that we as a people in America especially should be educated enough now about gay people and the lifestyle. Why does someone coming out have to be headline news now? A slow news day perhaps? This is about all I have to say on this subject but I welcome any comments. Now, get on with your life, okay?

Making Money On The Web with Affilate Marketing, another update and motivator

I vowed to not let a month slip by without making a post about something. But, it's been almost two months now so this hopefully we be short and possibly useful to someone on the world wide web. You see, it's all about caring for each other. Too often we get wrapped up in ourselves, hardly thinking of others. You can work so hard for yourself and get a lot of frustration but then if you stop just for a moment and do something for someone else, you get instant gratification. This might sound sucky to you and you may not even be interested in what I'm saying at this point in your life or day. That's okay because one day you will have these same thoughts and you might remember that you read about on a blog somewhere. My latest thoughts for myself are to begin creating a new web site to sell products. I have talked about affiliate marketing in prior posts. I have this web site design in mind, now I just need to get moving on the first step, creating that first home page. I already have the domain name and it's been sitting there doing nothing. I've signed up with companies year after year of which products I have liked. Now I can't even remember all of them. I know I have a file folder somewhere on this computer that may have all the emails with the acceptance of my applications to be an affiliate. I just have to hunt them down one by one. Each will be set up on their own page as a sub page behind the main home page. From the home page there will be a list of categories of products or just an A to Z list to click on. I'm not sure how it will go yet. Okay, I've given away my secret to success but I am hoping that it might benefit you to get going too on making money on the web. I'd like to see others doing this along with myself. Who knows what may come of all of this. I envision myself sipping a cool drink on a resort island with fellow affiliate marketers one day in the future. We each get up and speak about our successes and our business trials and tribulations. My end goal is to set up a trust to manage all the extra income I could never spend and help the poor. A bold and ambitious goal you might say. But, it's done all the time so why not we too. Like I said, giving is instant gratification. Helping each other is another one of those great little and important things in life. So, what are you waiting for, get going already.

Updates and What and Why

I pity the regular person who is not computer literate. We get these updates on a regular basis. By default most just download and install by themselves and nobody is the wiser. Except the illiterate computer uses that are frustrated because their computers have become slow or unresponsive. First thing that comes to people's minds is, 'I must have a virus'. Maybe but what does one do. Over the years I have learned that it is better to pay for a complete antivirus suite that help protect me. Many will argue over which product is better. You can either listen to someone else or try different ones until you find one you like. But, there is what this post is all about. TIME. So much time is devoted to our computer either in use or upkeep. If you are lucky enough to not have filled your hard drive with rarely used programs you might not have much trouble. But, the more you have loaded the more resources the computer has to use to keep up with it all. I have worked hard for years to keep the background resource usage to a minimum. To save the computer for me when I want to use it. I have turned off automatic updates on everything. Starting off with Windows Update. With Windows 7 you only get one update a month which is a blessing. Then there is Adobe Flash Player. Today I restarted the computer and first thing I see when logging on is an Adobe Updata for version 11.8.800.94 at 16.3mb of data. I don't know how much I really use Flash. I believe it is only for advertising and maybe some news articles I sometimes view. I have not put that much time into studying that but I'd rather update to keep the malware and Flash player attacks away. I have my antivirus set to update every four hours. It's quick and not that big a deal. It won't slow your computer down like an Adobe Flash update will. So, here's to those that like to know what's going on under the hood and are trying to stay on top of things. Good luck to you!

Google+ and Google Circles and less Facebook

I don't know about you but I have been giving less and less time to Facebook and more to Google+ and Google Circles. A new routine is embarked upon now. Boredom and letdowns is what always eventually turn me onto another path. Change is good for sure. As I am constantly on the lookout for the next new and great thing, I hope to post more on my blog here for anyone that may be interested in my findings. Lately though world events have cluttered my mind and it is hard to keep from noticing with all the push from the media. Rarely do I turn the television on anymore as there is just too much advertising and it gets old real fast. I use the fast advance on the DVR with the remote always nearby when a commercial is about to cut in. To hell with all of that I say. If I am going to buy something I will go looking on the web for it, not the tube. My television is like a plain old monitor to me. I only use it when I want to use the DVR appliance attached. So, here goes another day, hoping the rainy season goes away quickly. The lawn is waterlogged and it was a mess to cut yesterday. I had to change the blade to the regular one instead of the mulching one. The mulching blade was just leaving too much fine cuttings in clumps on the lawn and I have already had to deal with one outbreak of chinch bugs now. I'm sure there will be more to come. How I hate a lawn anymore. I will leave you with a thought today. Get more sleep and eat less. Don't forget to try and get some regular exercise. It just feels better if you do.

U.S.P.S lost my mail again. Am I the only one this happens too?

I know times are tough and budgets are being cut but this has been happening long before now. I bought something on eBay last week and the carrier left one of those slips telling me they missed me or something of the matter and that I could pick up my parcel the next day at 10:00 AM. I drove there and went to the window and the lady was a long time in the back looking and I knew I was cursed again. Sure enough, she tells me it isn't on the shelf where it is supposed to be. I gripe a little but am told I could talk to the manager. Oh, talk to the manager again. A lot of good this will do I thought as it has done nothing in the past. So, I walk over the side door and press the buzzer. I wait about five minutes and a guy comes to the door and I tell him my problem and he takes my slip and goes wandering away to the back somewhere. I wait another five or more minutes and he returns to tell me the bad news again. Okay, so now what I ask. He says the guy that had my parcel should be in about 10:30 AM and he could call me. No, no, no! I am not driving back here when this is not my fault. He explains it's a new guy on the route and that they are trying to split this alternate route into two or something like that. I really didn't get what he was telling me and not that it matters to me anyway and why is my subdivision an alternate route. Just get me MY mail to MY mailbox, please? Is that so hard? So, I tell him I'll wait in a chair over there on the side and be patient. I sit around for ten or fifteen minutes. I left my phone in the car and there are no clocks anywhere to be found in this post office. The manager comes out and tells me the package is not on his truck and begins telling me something else, I didn't pay much attention. He went on to say that he would find the parcel and have it delivered to me, today, I hope but I didn't get any promise either. He took my phone number and he had me sign the slip. As I'm signing I'm thinking what in the hell am I doing. I haven't received anything and he's having me sign this slip now? I know this is going to get deeper and I'll be back here to let you know how I'll soon be asking for another parcel to be sent and the postal service can reimburse the seller on eBay for the loss. Or, some such thing or another. I've been cursed all my life with stuff like this and I feel like I am the only one this happens to. I have just become used to it now and accept that nothing will ever go right in anything that I try to do that involves another human being. And then I just have to spend more time to work through to find a solution. As I age now I find time is more valuable and getting to be more valuable as time goes by. I never thought about it when I was a kid or when I was a lot younger. Time just seemed to never move then. Life sure is strange but then I can't say that anymore as I find I am understanding it a lot more now. That is another deeper subject I hesitate to go into here as it would bore the hell out of everyone reading this if you kept with me this far. So, till another day...! Update - Saturday night - No package, no phone call from the branch manager, nothing. As I expected. Now, wait till Monday. I know that day will pass too and nothing will happen. It will be up to me to have to call and try to get the manager on the phone and ask him if he even remembers me and what the status is of my parcel. I can barely keep my anger contained with this fucking bullshit!!! Late Update 7/27/2013- The mail person delivered my parcel the next day. I had sat in a chair in the garage for a while waiting, thinking it would arrive this way. But, I soon gave up and realized I am agonizing over this way too much. Needless to say, it was delivered of which I am thankful that I will not have to put in any more time on this.

Laptops and Tablets, what are you views?

Have been looking for a new notebook or laptop computer for over a year now. I am tired of this old HP dual core model I have. It is heavy for one thing and the battery is what weighs the most. The battery does not last long any more and I do not want to buy a new one for this old portable computer. I have been to the brick and mortar stores and looked at and lifted many of them. I am keen to Lenovo as I like their styling. Especially after having bought the desktop model a couple of years back and loving it without having any problems so far. So, with that, I welcome anyone's comments. I am looking forward to the new models soon to be out too. I have read where the new 4th generation processors work on 1.4 or 1.5 volts. That equates to a lot less power consumption and longer battery time. It would be cool to do tests of different laptops and their battery lasting power time. Are there any manufacturers out there who would care to donate? Just get in touch with me here. I am ready to go! Oh, tablets. I didn't mention anything about tablets did I. ;)

CreditKarma, Credit Cards and Your Financial Best Interest

We all use them and we all hate them. Lately I have been researching them. I have come across a couple of websites that have some very good information about credit cards with ways to find the best card for your purpose. I have been using a PayPal debit card for years now and did not realize that there were now other banks offering better returns like two and three percent cash back on purchases. One that stands out on top of the list is Bank of America. If you go to CreditCards.com you will see what I am talking about. There is a disclaimer at the bottom of this webpage that tells you that the owner may get compensated for certain company product offerings or advertising. I have spent two days now looking around and reading terms and conditions of different credit cards and what they have to offer. I had not realized that there are different cards for various reasons you may want one. Travel cards, cash back cards, reward cards, gas cards and I forgot what others. I am looking for a better cash back card myself. I pay my balance off each month and never have more than one card with a balance at one time. I do not like paying the banks interest on my purchases. Things are just expensive enough as it is. Besides, like I said above, you can get into the interest debt game and you can be in deep debt before you know it. Okay, if you have a smartphone, you have to get the CreditKarma app. It gives you your credit score within seconds of signing in and you stay signed in and only have to tap the app to see your score at any time. The other best feature I like is it will list all of the accounts you have open on another screen. Using the app it will tell you ways to make and keep your credit score high and in excellent 'A' territory. One rule I learned was never close an account. Credit history is what matters most I believe. If you close an account you just deleted credit history. Never missing a payment is a priority also of course. I have been looking for a new mortgage loan and after applying at three different lenders I find with each there is a credit inquiry that will take two points off my score. These inquiries are known as 'Hard' inquiries. Okay, I lost six points but I am not too worried about it as I am still over 700 and I am fine with that. I will make a decision soon to get a new cash back credit card. It is just a bit hard for me to accept that I will open myself up to yet another bank that will begin to send me more junk mail in my snail mail box on the curb. For years now I have tried to stop what was once an enormous pile of daily junk mail that I would have to weed through and toss most of it into my recycle bin or the shredder. But, now I am about to embark on slowly trying to get my credit score as high as possible. Just to see if I can. I like challenges. Take advantage of banks, don't let them take advantage of you. Have a good credit day! I took the time to search on Amazon a book about how to get the most out of credit cards. Even though it was published back in 2008 I could not find a bad review on the side panel. The electronic or Kindle edition is only $9.00. I may have to buy it and read through it. I have to wonder how relevant it is today though.

Spam Scam Emails, What I Am Getting At This Time!

I have been getting a lot of scam spam emails now with subject lines something along the lines of 'Your Order' and 'Shipping Details', etc. I have been in the habit of opening emails now and looking them over closely just to see what scam they are promoting now. First thing you do before you open the email is to hover your mouse over any word or word phrases that are highlighted in blue. Then if you look down at the bottom left of your screen you will see where the link would send you if you clicked on it. By looking closely at the details of the links you can easily see that if you were to click on the link you would be sent somewhere other than any official company website of which the scammer alludes to in the email. Thinking all this time that you have not ordered anything to begin with, or maybe you have. Clicking on the link can give you any number of things. The worst being some type of malware being dumped into your hard drive and causing you any number of problems from there on. This is where an antivirus program would have a good chance of stopping the threat before it could do any harm. One of the most common I have seen the last couple of years is the one where the malware will send out bogus emails to everyone in your contact list and more. I have gotten good at spotting these emails from contacts. I received one last week from someone I had forgotten about and never email anymore and never receive email from. I opened the email and I knew before I opened it that it was a malware spam message. It was easy to spot from the number of bogus looking email adddresses that were included along with my email address. I used to respond back to 'All' and try to alert those people included with the email but I would get some crazy replys. People giving me hell for sending them the spam and other nonsense. They just did not get it from the start. So, I just leave people alone now and let them learn and suffer on their own. Another note here, there was this information from the government years ago, I think it was the FTC or Federal Trade Commission, can't remember now. But, they had a bulletin that stated that you could forward them any spam emails and they would work to try to stop the barrage we were getting. Well, they did a good job back then as things seemed to quiet down quite a bit but over time spammers from Nigeria and other places began to get busy. Back to what I wanted to say about the FTC bulletin. I noticed that as I began forwarding the spam messages to the email address I was given I would begin to receive even more spam mail and with some really weird stuff too. I think I even clicked on one just to see what would happen and I got a virus that I never could get rid of. That computer was retired long ago. I still have the hard drive and one day think I will reformat it and use it for something else. So, last night I sent a spam email to the old FTC spam reporting email address again just to see what nonsense I get back in my spam folder. I have to wonder if we do not have young people working in that department and they are just harvesting all the emails they receive and then selling the lists to the Nigerians. Corruption is everwhere it seems. Have fun, be safe and do not be so quick to click! Buy antivirus software, it's like insurance for your computer. Yeah, they are not all the same and they are not one hundred percent but it is better than nothing in my opinion. One day I would love to sit down and read a book like this or any of the others shown on this page.

Video On Demand, Any Show That Has Aired, For Only Fifty Cent!

As I laid down to take a short five minute nap a thought occurred to me. Having had the opportunity and the time to record my favorite shows on an old Tivo Series II recorder some years ago and then archving them to tape, had me thinking. Recently I purchased the newest Tivo Series III HD 300 hour recorder for the wife to use in the master bedroom. She has a lot of shows she likes to watch and likes to watch them in bed after a long day of work. I still have my old Tivo Series II running after ten years of great uninterrupted service. I don't use it to record anymore as it is only standard definition. My recorder is a Verizon DVR in the main living room and I hooked up an external one terrabyte hard drive to it which gave me over a hundred hours of high definition recording. But, here is the problem. The thought of having to hook up and connect my old Hi-8 recoder deck to transfer anything from the Verizon DVR and then transferring from tape to the pc for use later just makes me tired thinking about it. With all the current hoopla about Netflix partnering up with Verizon and who knows what other service provider, who cares at this point. Somehow I foresee in the future where these big networks will get a clue and begin to build their own huge data centers to archive and store all their video and then connect the internet pipes and allow anyone to download a copy for fifty cents. I liken this to Apples iTunes service. Their ninety nine cent model for a tune I still cannot see subscribing to. If music and video were made more affordable and more convienant I would imagine the whole country and possibly the world might want to add it to their subscriptions. For now, we are just stumbling along and leaving the consumers with not much to digest for mobile entertainment and enjoyment. I for one would like to be able to download my favorite weekly show, CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood, transfer it to my Android smartphone for playback when it's more convienant for me to watch. For now though I just have to hope that the show doesn't get interrupted by the servive provider and the dvr gets to record the full hour and a half show. Lately thought I cannot even find the time to watch the daily evening news that I have been recording let alone my favorite show.

Adobe Flash Player 11.6.602.171, update!

I came home to find my computer a bit sluggish. The hard drive led was showing continuous activity. I initiated a restart of the pc. It took a while for the drive to stop it's activity before the pc shutdown. Maybe two or three minutes I believe. I'm finding that I need to reboot about once a week to refresh the memory and clear up any leaks. Even Windows 7 Pro has memory leaks but not as bad as past versions I feel. I cannot remember having on BSD or blue screen of death with Windows 7 since purchasing this Lenovo i5 machine about two years or more ago. It's been a real joy to use. It's fast and dependable and multi-task well. So, the installer only showed that this latest update was 11.6. I had to go into the control pane and pull up the programs listing to see the actual complete version number. I don't concern myself with the details of what fixes or security holes it has cleaned up with it. I just want to get it installed and move on. At least with Windows 7 you only get a malicious software tool update once a month from Microsoft. I am more annoyed now with the constant updating of apps on my smartphone. I took the time a couple of days ago to revisit Google's android SDK or system developer kit tutorials, just to try and get some more understanding of how all that software works. My long term goal is to one day start programming an app or two and get them into the Google App Store to make a few bucks. So, now on to more computer fun today. How's your pc working?

Lottery Winnings!

After reading an article about the Missouri Powerball winners, I just wonder how much money has gone to the government when they take their share in taxes. Ever thought about that? Probably not, but, you have to wonder, will this help our fiscal debt? Or, is this only state governments who takes their share of the winnings? I have not researched this but I wanted to post this quick thought in the hope that I might find a website somewhere that keeps track of this, later on. Can anyone comment on this? Update-5/2/2013, I want to add a quick note about a guy I saw on 60 Minutes who won the Florida Lottery seven times. He has a book on Amazon that I would like to take the time to read. I am not getting any younger and if I can spare a dollar a day from taking my lunch to work, I figure I can blow it on this only form of gambling I would do.

Adobe Flash Player 11.6.602.68 (15.11 MB)

I feel like a beta tester for software. I have even taken time to give feedback. Sometimes it was actually taken and updated into the software. You get a feeling of satisfaction when that happens. Especially when you really like the software. As for Flash player, we cannot live without it you would think. But, can we? Can you think of the times it is needed when you are browsing the web? First thing that comes to my mind is 'advertising' or 'advertisers'. I do not know when it has actually served me for anything that I wanted to view. So, this update awaits me. A checkbox is handily checked for me to install Chrome as my default Browser and Google Toolbar. Like I really need another toolbar to have to take up my browser viewing windown. Is Google paying Adobe to advertise this? Every time I get an update notification I always know there is going to be something they are going to try to push on me. There really is just too much stuff on my computer that I feel I have to aware of. Otherwise who knows how screwed up it could get by letting everything install by default. What are you thoughts on all of this?