I don't often go into the nuts and bolts operation of computers even though I was in the terms of buzz word people, an "early adopter" of computers. My foray started back in the eighties when I was looking for ways to electronically storing all of my articles, stories and first drafts of screenplays. I went to Bob, my trusted friend, and asked him how many pages would a computer hold. He looked at me and said that it depended on the size of my hard drive, which at the time was about 20 megabytes. I said, yes, but how many pages and he said about 20 megabytes worth and I asked how many pages that was and he said about 20 megabytes worth. This went on for about 10 large draft beers until we really didn't care anymore and I bought a computer off him. Wonderful marketing scheme, I think. My point is that I am not a neophyte when it comes to computer technology or applications, but I was stymied a while back when one day I noticed on my Firefox browser that a Yahoo tab had appeared and subsequently when I went to search for something by opening a new window, the default search engine was Yahoo and not my normal Google. I tried everything I could think of to change this back. I disabled the Yahoo toolbar, I reset my default search engine, but still the tab was on my Firefox toolbar and the search engine kept defaulting to Yahoo. After a few months of frustration, I resorted to a solution I usually tell everyone who encounters a problem on their computer. Do a search online and see who else has the same problem and see if anyone has solved their problem. I guess I should listen to my own advice. After a pretty exhaustive search I found one page that detailed a solution. Apparently, Yahoo has taken to adding an invisible add-on to Firefox's add-ons. You cannot detect it using the standard procedure of looking for it. Smart people that Yahoo group. What you must do is go into the Help of Firefox and select, "Restart with Add-ons Disabled". This brings up a text box in which you select, "Disable all Add-ons" and then restart. Once opened again, you can go to Tools, then "Add-on" and select which of the add-ons you really want back on. Just don't go near any Yahoo ones that are still there. The link to this original page is http://medicine-opera.com/2010/03/how-to-disable-yahoos-theft-of-firefoxs-open-a-new-tab/ . While I am pontificating about little irritating things on Firefox, if you happen to get a text box message stating that something is trying to fake a security update on Firefox, that is a Google updater trying to update. To get rid of that message box, go to add-ons and disable the updater. Simple as that.
Class over, smoke 'em if you got 'em.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Here's the Ying, Now Where's the Yang
I certainly don’t need to preach that we live in a very complex and very complicated world right now. Situations seem to be boiling over in all parts of the world, all at the same time. I am sure this happened before in the history of the planet, but in those days we were not as globally aware of everything that was occurring. The phrase, “out of sight, out of mind” certainly would have described that mind-set. Things that we would never be exposed to come into our house on a voluntary basis or as an intrusion almost every day of the week. To be honest, I don’t need a daily phone call just when I am sitting down to dinner with my family to let me in on a great deal from my bank, your bank, or anybody elses’ bank for that matter. It is nice they think of me and all, but a letter that I could ignore would have the same effect.
I don’t know if it was out of a morbid sense of curiosity or whether there was a inner demon working at the time, but a few years ago I did a few clicks on my computer and watched the execution of Saddam Hussein when it was making its’ rounds on virtually every web page on Earth. At first, I kept thinking, “Okay, here is a very bad man, getting what he deserves”. I don’t think anyone on this Earth would ever be able to tally how many lives this particular man destroyed as he plundered, raped and invaded countries. But still as I watched this video, all I could see was a poor, pitiful, broken old man being hung. I really did have to shake myself and remind myself what this person did to millions of people. Anyone who allows his son to torture the national soccer team because they lost a game really is not quite fit to roam the surface of this planet in my books. But then that does raise the question. Does anyone, no matter what they have done, deserve to die? That is an argument that has been debated for a lot longer than I have been around and I am sure will continue a lot longer after I am gone.
Still that image and thought has stayed with me for quite a while as I thought about very bad things that happen to very bad people. I don’t know anybody who was directly or indirectly affected by Saddam’s life, so it is hard to say. From a global perceptive there are two points of view, one is that he was a maniacal tyrant who deserved everything he got (the US point of view) and the other was that he was a merciless dictator who held together the tenuous relationship of tribal factions in an area that didn’t respect democratically made borders or treaties. A delicate balance of order and terror which kept the lid on the country, and something which was greatly disturbed when he was removed from the picture. Chaos ensued in a vacuum of organized brutality.
The scales seem to swing wildly, back and forth between extremes, one would think that there has to be a balance somewhere, a Ying and Yang of the world. For every bad thing out there, I am sure there are very good things out there that happen to very good people, we just don’t hear about them all the time. Our media prefers to dwell on the bad things as it makes for better press and better sales. But every once in a while we hear of someone, a nice, hardworking someone, who is down on their luck and things are looking as bleak as they can possibly be and then using their last two dollars, they buy a lottery ticket and find themselves the following morning richer than they ever dreamed. Good things that happen to good people.
But even though we are often happy, if not out-right pleased when bad things happen to bad people, unfortunately sometimes very bad things happen to very good people. It is at times like this that I look to the sky and implore, “ What the Hell are you thinking about?”
I find myself exposed to this more and more in my life as my friends and family age. A friend of mine died shortly before Christmas a few years ago. This definitely fell into the realm of very bad things. He was younger and in better shape than I and certainly deserved to stay around a lot longer. As I sat one evening thinking about how delicate everything is in this world was and thinking how horrible the timing was for this disease to claim him. I heard the most heartwarming thing I have heard in many, many years. Just before he died, he had ordered Christmas presents for his family and had them delivered to his home shortly before the 25th . I am sure his spirit was in the room as they unwrapped their presents on Christmas morning. He gave them what was truly an almost impossible present, a wonderful time in what would have been the darkest Christmas of their lives. He took the shadow out of that very bad thing and was able to shine a little light for all of us to see and maybe restore a little balance in the world.
I don’t know if it was out of a morbid sense of curiosity or whether there was a inner demon working at the time, but a few years ago I did a few clicks on my computer and watched the execution of Saddam Hussein when it was making its’ rounds on virtually every web page on Earth. At first, I kept thinking, “Okay, here is a very bad man, getting what he deserves”. I don’t think anyone on this Earth would ever be able to tally how many lives this particular man destroyed as he plundered, raped and invaded countries. But still as I watched this video, all I could see was a poor, pitiful, broken old man being hung. I really did have to shake myself and remind myself what this person did to millions of people. Anyone who allows his son to torture the national soccer team because they lost a game really is not quite fit to roam the surface of this planet in my books. But then that does raise the question. Does anyone, no matter what they have done, deserve to die? That is an argument that has been debated for a lot longer than I have been around and I am sure will continue a lot longer after I am gone.
Still that image and thought has stayed with me for quite a while as I thought about very bad things that happen to very bad people. I don’t know anybody who was directly or indirectly affected by Saddam’s life, so it is hard to say. From a global perceptive there are two points of view, one is that he was a maniacal tyrant who deserved everything he got (the US point of view) and the other was that he was a merciless dictator who held together the tenuous relationship of tribal factions in an area that didn’t respect democratically made borders or treaties. A delicate balance of order and terror which kept the lid on the country, and something which was greatly disturbed when he was removed from the picture. Chaos ensued in a vacuum of organized brutality.
The scales seem to swing wildly, back and forth between extremes, one would think that there has to be a balance somewhere, a Ying and Yang of the world. For every bad thing out there, I am sure there are very good things out there that happen to very good people, we just don’t hear about them all the time. Our media prefers to dwell on the bad things as it makes for better press and better sales. But every once in a while we hear of someone, a nice, hardworking someone, who is down on their luck and things are looking as bleak as they can possibly be and then using their last two dollars, they buy a lottery ticket and find themselves the following morning richer than they ever dreamed. Good things that happen to good people.
But even though we are often happy, if not out-right pleased when bad things happen to bad people, unfortunately sometimes very bad things happen to very good people. It is at times like this that I look to the sky and implore, “ What the Hell are you thinking about?”
I find myself exposed to this more and more in my life as my friends and family age. A friend of mine died shortly before Christmas a few years ago. This definitely fell into the realm of very bad things. He was younger and in better shape than I and certainly deserved to stay around a lot longer. As I sat one evening thinking about how delicate everything is in this world was and thinking how horrible the timing was for this disease to claim him. I heard the most heartwarming thing I have heard in many, many years. Just before he died, he had ordered Christmas presents for his family and had them delivered to his home shortly before the 25th . I am sure his spirit was in the room as they unwrapped their presents on Christmas morning. He gave them what was truly an almost impossible present, a wonderful time in what would have been the darkest Christmas of their lives. He took the shadow out of that very bad thing and was able to shine a little light for all of us to see and maybe restore a little balance in the world.
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