Wednesday, July 24, 2024

VPN

Do you value your privacy? Me too. That's why I use a VPN when I'm on the Internet.

What's a VPN? It stands for Virtual Private Network. One end of the VPN is at my PC and the other end is at the VPN provider. The VPN scrambles my communications so that no one who intercepts my web-surfing or email can know what I'm doing. My data is flowing through a "tunnel" which encrypts the data and obscures my IP address. The other end of my VPN is in Washington D.C., although there are many cities around the world that I could connect with. When I connect with the other end of the VPN, it unscrambles my communications but it continues to use a fake IP addrss. No one out there who may intercept my communications knows my identity. 

There are many VPNs from which to choose. I use PrivadoVPN. Due to a special deal I have with EasyNews, I don't pay for PrivadoVPN. However, if I did have to pay for it. it would cost $1.99/month for 24 months Their website gives a lot more information. If you want to sign up, go to https://privadovpn.com/

Sunday, July 21, 2024

Biden Drops Out

Joe Biden has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race. I almost breathed a sigh of relief. Although I liked Biden's record during his first four years, I had come to believe that I could not support him for another term in office. He is just too old. Worse, he stumbles through his thoughts and speech. He doesn't look like a man ready for four more years in a high stress job.

At the same time, I knew I couldn't support Trump. He is a convicted felon and an admitted woman molester. Remember the "hot mic" moment on the Access Hollywood clip in which Trump bragged about being able to molest women and get away with it? Except, one woman sued him and won a judgement against Trump. I can't support a molester (and possible rapist) for president. Our country deserves better than that.

So who is going to take Biden's place? My bet is on Kamala Harris. If elected, she would be the country's first female president (it's about time!) and the first Black president. Her father was born in Jamaica and her mother was born in India. That would make her the first president of South Asian descent.

Compared to Harris, Trump is the pasty, old, rich White billionaire. It's not a good look.

Saturday, July 20, 2024

Name Tag

This happened a couple of days ago.

My partner Nuria wears a Macy's name tag. It's a white tag with black letters that spell her name, "NURIA". A magnet inside her blouse holds the name tab in place.

A few days ago, Nuria was leaving for work. She put her name tag on, and left the house. When she got to her car, she noticed that her name tag was missing. She looked in her car and under the seats, but no name tag. She left the car and retraced her steps to the front door, but no name tag. I joined the search, walking up and down the front sidewalk, looking in her car, searching under the seats, but it clearly was not there, nor was it on or beside the front sidewalk. It was gone; it had vanished. We continued looking, even taking her car to the back yard so we could search it more thoroughly in safety. I retraced her steps over and over, as did she, but the name tag was gone. In the twenty feet between our front porch and the street, her name tag had utterly vanished. She found the magnet inside her blouse, but the name tag it had held in place had vanished during her short walk down the front sidewalk.

How? 

Thursday, July 11, 2024

Procyon

Sixty years ago I enjoyed reading and writing science fiction short stories. I never had any of them published but, all these years later, I have the frst page of one of my stories on my PC. The name of the story is/was "Procyon". I am posting that page below:

A thousand miles from the planet Earth a starship blinked into existence, bringing with it a smaller ship. In the smaller ship a man named Rymer turned his face toward the round viewport beside him and watched the starship dwindle as the engine of his ship placed distance between the two vessels. As he gazed upon it the starship snapped back into nothingness, like a burst soap bubble, and he was alone.

In the warm darkness of his cramped cabin Rymer continued to stare at the space where the starship had been, while his mind braced against the isolation that was already beginning to wash over him. If he could remain alive for the next seventy-two hours he would again see that starship and would move toward it, watching it loom larger and closer until the thin metal shell that was his ship gingerly touched the other silvery hull; then the stars would disappear and he would be on his way home.

He extended a gloved hand toward a switch and the stars began to rain past the viewport. He let the ship roll slowly until he saw the burning spark called Procyon, and then his mind flashed toward a world spinning about that distant sun. His friends were there, as was his life - not here, he thought, on this strange muddy ball called Earth. The starship would reach that distant world in a few days, but his vessel was not a starship and could never make the journey. He was stranded here until the starship returned and nudged against his tiny craft and gripped it in the field of its generators and tore it out of space to hurtle back with it toward that star eleven light years away.

He touched another switch and Earth rose in the viewport, then stopped huge and motionless to fill all space outside the aperture. Rymer stared with cold dislike at the bright planet, for it had caused him to be here and to chance losing his life in hostile space far from his native world. He stared and frowned, while the bright planet gleamed its warm radiance into his face and onto the cabin wall beyond, and at last he rolled the ship away so that he could no longer see the golden world outside.

His eyes skipped among the dials and gauges glowing reassuringly around him before resting upon a screen that held an image of the world outside. As the ship's flight computer executed maneuvers necessary to wrestle the ship into an earth orbit, Rymer adjusted a grid over the image and turned on his reconnaissance equipment. He consulted charts and aimed his instruments at selected points on the planet below, while a machine tabulated radio emission spectra, infrared sources, atmospheric spectrograms, and a dozen other factors. At the completion of his survey Rymer noted with considerable surprise that he had discovered a radio beacon on the planet's surface. Further investigation was required, and as he programmed a computer landing, Rymer wondered if he was about to step into a trap.

A rocket flared silent flame and the ship banked into the first thin stratum of Earth's atmosphere, slowly steepening its angle of descent until the craft began pushing before it a thundering shock wave that streamed back and away from the ship, carrying off the searing heat generated by ramming through miles of atmosphere. Rymer sat inside his small metal world and looked without thinking at the fiery death beyond the viewport.

Thursday, July 4, 2024

Happy 4th

Happy 4th of July and, like the man said, try not to destroy the neighborhood when you're celebrating...

[Play Video]

Wednesday, July 3, 2024

The 2024 Election

In about 4 months, on November 5, 2024, Americans will vote for their next president. I support Joe Biden and I'll be glad to explain why.

Compare Donald Trump with Joe Biden:

Donald Trump:

  • signed a new tax bill into law that gave permanent tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy, but then applied deferred (for 10 years) tax increases to lower and middle income taxpayers.
  • downplayed the severity of Covid, which led to more deaths in the US than anywhere else on earth.
  • abandoned our allies and coddled the world's dictators. (I remember when Trump met with Putin; only three people were in the meeting: Putin, Putin's translator, and Trump. Trump had his own translator but did not allow him to be in the meeting with Putin. Why?)
  • enacted a policy of separating migrant children from their families at the border.
  • emboldened neo-Nazis and white supremacists to the point where they were marching in the streets (remember Charlottesville?)
  • Trump's final act in office was to prevent a peaceful transfer of power for the first time in this nation's history.
  • Trump is an aspiring dictator and has said so.

Joe Biden:

  • led the US to the fastest economic recovery in the entire world.
  • secured record climate spending.
  • got the government to finally negotiate lower drug prices for Americans along with capping out of pocket healthcare costs for seniors, and lowered the cost of insulin and inhalers.
  • passed the inflation reduction act.
  • increased veteran health care benefits with the PACT act.
  • upgraded our nation's infrastructure with the Infrastructure act.
  • created a clean energy boom with the CHIPS act.
  • made kids safer with the gun safety law.
  • added 800,000 manufacturing jobs.
  • added 300,000 clean energy jobs.
  • added 15 million total jobs.
  • presided over a record stock market, a record economic recovery, sinking inflation, higher wages, and the strongest economy in the entire world.

Tuesday, July 2, 2024

Gender Roulette

I've been encountering increasing numbers of articles about people who don't identify with their birth gender but want to be considered a member of the opposite sex. So there are men who want to be referred to with the pronouns she and her. And there are women who want to be referred to with the pronouns he and him

But there's more. Some people claim to identify as they and them. So we might hear the following conversation:

"Have you seen Blake today?"

"No, but I saw them yesterday."

And if you don't agree that this is acceptable, they will claim that there is something wrong with you

This is insanity. Although, I shouldn't be too harsh on him/her/them. Frankly, I identify as a cabbage. I spell my name Brassica Oleracea, I have a glycemic value of 10, and I love sunny days. 

I, too, can play this stupid game, and I think I just won.