The Rambling Taoist: Computers

Showing posts with label Computers. Show all posts

Sunday, May 28, 2017

Never (?) Say Never (?)

For years, I swore I would never open a Twitter account. For the most part, I think the Twitter world is insipid. Why waste one's time on an avenue one isn't interested in?

Then a funny thing happened. We decided that the radio station should be on Twitter and I kinda head up the production/internet side of the station, so I became the de facto Twitter person!!

In some ways, Twitter has made it easier to connect with certain individuals. On the other hand, I have enough trouble trying to communicate with people in-person and via email. Being limited to 140 characters almost guarantees that I am misunderstood regularly or that I don't express my points adequately.

Still, it is what it is.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Virtual Target Practice

Trey Smith

In a recently released report about the Sandy Hook school shooting of last December, one of the revelations is that the shooter (Adam Lanza) possessed a video game called School Shooting. As reported by the Guardian, the game features "a character controlled by the player who enters a school and shoots students."

I am sure that some people will point to this particular game as being a cause of the tragedy. Other people will broaden the scope to say that all violent video games are part of the problem and, consequently, should be banned. Still others will point out that millions of people play violent video games and yet they don't commit heinous acts, so the problem obviously isn't the games themselves.

Where do I stand on the issue? Sort of in the middle.

I do think violent video games are part of the problem, but that doesn't mean that I believe they should be singled out. Violence permeates our society. Our federal government has a "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. This perspective has trickled down to local police forces. Even ordinary citizens -- like George Zimmerman -- wrap themselves in the shoot first mantra.

Most of the top box office draws in the film industry employ varying degrees of violence to sell tickets. The same is true for television programs. Heck, a good deal of the most popular music these days is filled with violent themes. When you add in the amount of violence showcased in a great deal of the "hallowed" religious tracts from the Abrahamic religions, the whole thing ends up tied neatly with a bow!

Yes, a video game entitled School Shooting is vulgar, but so too are the violent themes that seem to worm their way into every nook, cranny and crevice of our lives. Banning one tiny element won't make that much difference at all.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

A Bump in the Road?

Trey Smith

On Thursday, I shared with you all that it looked like we finally had a place to land to before our house is foreclosed upon. We had been notified that our application to an apartment complex in Ocean Shores had been approved and the target date to sign the lease papers was this Friday, September 20.

Well, that was before we hit the bump in the road!

Della received a call from the apartment manager yesterday (I was taking a nap). He told her that he had just encountered an unexpected snag and it is not the kind of snag that someone would expect. When he went to enter my personal data in the company's computer system, he discovered that "I" was already there and that "I" live in Seatac!

Of course, I do not now nor have I ever lived in Seatac, WA. In fact, unless you count the two times I have driven up I-5 to Seattle (spanning 20+ years) and passed through the city limits solely on the interstate, I have never been to the Seattle suburb of Seatac. Regardless of these facts, there is someone who lives in Seatac in an apartment this company manages with my given name and my social security number is attached to that individual's computer record.

Della immediately phoned the apartment complex in which this other person lives. As it turns out, while we share the same name, their records show that our social security numbers are NOT the same. Consequently, one would think the problem is solved.

Not so fast. Even though it is obvious that someone in this company's central office has made a boo boo, they say that they must track down and verify that THEY have, in deed, made a mistake. And that, Della was told, will take time. So, I will be more than surprised if the September 20 date stands pat.

Life is about navigating the bumps in the road and we've been traveling on roads with quite a few bumps lately!

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Is It Time to Throw Up Our Hands?

Trey Smith

I bet the US government isn't as upset as they let on in regards to the recent revelations about their massive spying programs. I'm not saying that they are particularly overjoyed about being exposed and I'm not suggesting that they don't have some legitimate concerns, but all in all, the vast majority of the world that uses the internet is now on notice that the leading governmental spy agencies are bound and determined to get their grubby hands on as much of our information as they can and there is not much we can do to stop them. While these continued revelations are politically messy, they do impart a chilling effect on a lot of people.

In conversations around my community, most of the folks I have talked to express a feeling of utter impotence in the face of this onslaught. One fellow said he was ready to throw up his hands. "I will just assume that the government is watching my every move," he lamented.

I, for one, don't think we should give in. While we might not be able to stop all of the unwanted government (and corporate) intrusions, there ARE ways to make such intrusions more difficult on the intruders. Writing in the Guardian, Bruce Schneier offers 5 such tips.

1) Hide in the network. Implement hidden services. Use Tor to anonymize yourself. Yes, the NSA targets Tor users, but it's work for them. The less obvious you are, the safer you are.

2) Encrypt your communications. Use TLS. Use IPsec. Again, while it's true that the NSA targets encrypted connections – and it may have explicit exploits against these protocols – you're much better protected than if you communicate in the clear.

3) Assume that while your computer can be compromised, it would take work and risk on the part of the NSA – so it probably isn't. If you have something really important, use an air gap. Since I started working with the Snowden documents, I bought a new computer that has never been connected to the internet. If I want to transfer a file, I encrypt the file on the secure computer and walk it over to my internet computer, using a USB stick. To decrypt something, I reverse the process. This might not be bulletproof, but it's pretty good.

4) Be suspicious of commercial encryption software, especially from large vendors. My guess is that most encryption products from large US companies have NSA-friendly back doors, and many foreign ones probably do as well. It's prudent to assume that foreign products also have foreign-installed backdoors. Closed-source software is easier for the NSA to backdoor than open-source software. Systems relying on master secrets are vulnerable to the NSA, through either legal or more clandestine means.

5) Try to use public-domain encryption that has to be compatible with other implementations. For example, it's harder for the NSA to backdoor TLS than BitLocker, because any vendor's TLS has to be compatible with every other vendor's TLS, while BitLocker only has to be compatible with itself, giving the NSA a lot more freedom to make changes. And because BitLocker is proprietary, it's far less likely those changes will be discovered. Prefer symmetric cryptography over public-key cryptography. Prefer conventional discrete-log-based systems over elliptic-curve systems; the latter have constants that the NSA influences when they can.

I have two other tips: 1) Switch from Windows to a Linux distro and 2) Use as many open source software programs as possible.

While reports indicate that Microsoft works closely with the NSA, Linux is community-driven. People from all over the world work on it OUT IN THE OPEN. Without a centralized corporate structure, the NSA has no singular person or group they could go to in order to try to bribe or compel them to allow for backdoors or other kinds of embedded vulnerabilities. If the NSA figured out how to introduce one, my guess is that it would be discovered darn quick and eradicated. The very same is true for open source software programs as well.

This is not the time to allow apathy to sweep over us. If people simply throw up their hands and do nothing, the NSA wins by default. It might look like a case of David vs. Goliath, but don't forget, David won in the end! (Yeah, I know. That's a biblical reference. So, sue me!)

Monday, June 24, 2013

Attempting to Protect Your Online Privacy Is a Trigger for Investigation

Trey Smith

While I use several privacy and security add-ons in my Firefox web browser, I don't encrypt my emails in Thunderbird. To be perfectly frank, the reason I have not utilized encryption to date is that I don't understand it very well, though I've been reading up on it lately. Recently, I learned something that blows my mind. One of the triggers the NSA uses to decide whether or not an individual's email should be retained for further investigation is if the email messages themselves are encrypted. (Ooh, it's "legal" because the FISA Court says so!)

Think about that for a moment. The very act of attempting to protect your privacy from being intercepted by third parties and/or hackers is now a reason for suspicion by government-contracted spies!

What are you hiding?

Well, maybe I don't want to take the chance that someone might copy my credit card, bank account or social security number. Maybe I'm sharing some personal information about myself that I don't want unscrupulous individuals to exploit. Maybe it's nothing more than a private message that I don't want broadcast all over the internet. There are oodles of legitimate reasons I might want to encrypt the emails I send.

But in today's big dragnet world, legitimate reasons don't matter. The moment you encrypt something, you are drawing a large target on your back.

It would seem we must now pick between two poisons. Either we can choose to encrypt our email communiques which will provide the NSA with a "legal" reason to add our names to the list of "suspected terrorists" OR we can choose not to encrypt our emails and open ourselves up to be easier prey for third party intercepts and hackers.

Some choice!

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Up in the Clouds

Trey Smith

The website for the Washington State court system has been hacked and up to 160,000 Social Security numbers and a million driver's license numbers may have been accessed, officials said on Thursday.

The disclosure, which follows a number of major hacking incidents in recent years that have targeted a range of companies from Twitter to Apple Inc, raises concerns that the information accessed could be used to commit financial fraud.

The breach was discovered in February, and officials at first believed no confidential information had been leaked even though a large amount of data was downloaded from the website, the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts said.

But officials later determined that 94 Social Security numbers were definitely obtained by the person or group that committed the security breach, while 160,000 Social Security numbers and a million driver's license numbers may have been accessed.
~ from Washington State System Hacked, Data of Thousands at Risk by Elaine Porterfield ~

Every time I hear someone extol the benefits of cloud computing, I shudder a bit. It's one thing to use Blogger to host this blog because there isn't any sensitive data here, but it is another thing altogether to upload Social Security and credit card numbers. Even though this news article isn't necessarily about cloud computing, it does highlight the dangers.

I don't think that a cyber criminal syndicate sits around trying to strategize ways specifically to hack into my computer. I don't think one criminal says to another, "If I could hack into Trey Smith's computer, it would represent my crowning achievement in life." The same cannot be said for efforts to hack into corporate or governmental websites. Such sites tend to possess a treasure trove of valuable data that can be easily manipulated for nefarious purposes.

And that is why, with few exceptions, I don't store any pertinent data online. When I pay bills or make purchases online, I enter my debit card numbers manually. When given the option to have the numbers retained by the site, I pass. Yes, it is less convenient, but I'd rather be a bit inconvenienced than to allow a company to store the information and then later find out that their system has been hacked and the data has been stolen!

Monday, April 15, 2013

Closed Windows

Trey Smith

Back while Della was still in White Salmon, her clunky old computer started going on the fritz. So, we bought her a refurbished IBM. This machine came preloaded with Windows 7. Since both of us have been using Linux Mint for some time, Della quickly discovered WHY she readily had agreed to allow me to dump this Microsoft product to install Linux in the first place.

Now that she's home, I too have come to understand why I detest Windows so much. For one thing, the operating system constantly downloads and uploads who knows what and you can't seem to turn it off without leaving your computer completely vulnerable. There are a myriad of annoying pop ups that, when you close them, they simply pop up again a few seconds later. Even when you tell the computer to shut off the pop ups, the system ignores the instruction.

But the part that takes the cake is that Windows 7 makes it next too impossible to uninstall it! In previous versions of Windows, there was a tool you could use to reformat the hard disk. This tool has been removed in Windows 7. It took me several hours to get Linux Mint loaded and we still have a problem with the wireless adapter because, it seems, it is formatted to work with Windows and nothing else.

It would appear that Microsoft is scared of Linux, even though Linux enjoys a very small market share. Why else would a company make it so damn difficult to jettison its crappy proprietary operating system?

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Fighting for Total Dominion

Trey Smith

If it wasn't so harmful, it would be funny: a marketing battle between the two technology giants Microsoft and Google over who lacks integrity and is exploitative. It's been going on for a while and with every thrust and block the thing becomes more grotesque and more revealing.

First, by way of introduction, well...you don't need an introduction.

If you're using Windows, your computer lives Microsoft. If you don't, you use a Microsoft product (like Word or some smaller program you don't notice on your desktop) or someone sends you stuff using one. You can't escape MicroSoft if you use a computer.

Google is to your Internet life what Microsoft is to your workspace. Even if you don't use its increasingly popular Gmail program, you have used Google Search at some point. So prominent is our use of this resource that, in English, "google it" is now an accepted phrase. No, there is no Google-less life in this country.

So a marketing duel between these two fills the air with the very loud clanging of the very large swords.

The latest thrust is Microsoft's campaign about "Scroogle": a term that meshes Google and Screwed, or maybe "Scrooge" (since it launched around last Christmas). It also pilfers the name of an alternative search engine (Scroogle Search) that went belly up last year. If it didn't steal someone else's idea, after all, it wouldn't be Microsoft.

In December, Microsoft began denouncing Google's charging for better rankings in its "shopping" searches and telling people they should use Bing (Microsoft's search engine) instead. That's right, when you do a "shopping" search on Google, it returns a list of search items from companies that pay Google. The more they pay, the higher they are in the returned search. If you click it you can read Google's admission about taking filthy lucre in return for returning a good search position.
~ from Microsoft and Google's Pathetic, Revealing and Frightening War by Alfredo Lopez ~

As Lopez points out in this article, what borders on funny is the fact that behemoth Microsoft is trying to paint behemoth Google as a self-interested ogre. It is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black! This is not to say that Google is not an ogre; it is more that Microsoft is just as onerous in their own right. It would be like Paris Hilton calling out Britney Spears for being a camera hog.

And let's face it, both Microsoft and Google have become ubiquitous. Though I use Linux Mint as the operating system on my desktop computer, this blog is hosted on Google and I often download Microsoft Word documents (that I open and save with LibreOffice). In other words, it is hard to escape either one's tentacles.

Since both control so much of what each of us does in computing, why the big fight? Lopez provides the revealing answer.

The problem is that they have run out of life to control and so they are now fighting over the aspects of your life they already dominate and that they have increasingly limited.

You see, they desire absolute dominion. It's not enough to make millions or billions of dollars. It's not enough to control specific areas of turf. Both want to control the whole enchilada. They want every computer user to be forced to go through them and them alone. The only thing standing in their way is each other and so that is why they have gone to war.

Let's hope that neither of them wins or, even better, that they destroy each other.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Awash in Words

Trey Smith

With so many hand-held electronic devices these days, blog posts can be written almost anyplace. You can be on a train, plane, at work/school (though you're supposed to be working!) or any other of a million places. You can be in your native country or halfway around the world.

As I've mentioned before, I don't own any hand-held electronic communication devices. With this pertinent information, you might surmise that the vast majority of my posts are formulated and written on my personal computer located in a second floor bedroom that I refer to as my "office." If this is what you're thinking -- if, of course, you even think about such things -- then you are half right.

While I certainly DO type my posts in this one spot, I formulate most of them...in the shower!

There is not a lot to do in the shower. The process of washing is such a rote task that I don't need to think to myself, "Hmm. Maybe I should grab that bar of soap there and rub it all over my body!" So, with nothing else to do, I write blog posts in my head. Sometimes I even write them out loud. Since I take 2 or 3 showers a day -- hot water does wonders for an aching body -- I can formulate 3 - 6 posts every 24 hours.

Not surprisingly, what I write in the shower rarely makes it into print in a precise manner. It seems that my mind and my fingers aren't always on the same page! There are times that I race upstairs to type out what I have thought out, but my fingers decide to go in a different direction altogether.

Aah, such is life.

Monday, August 13, 2012

For the "Love" of HAL

Trey Smith

And this is just the beginning; current drones are like the Wright brothers' prototypes compared with what's coming next. And here is where the real danger resides: automated killing as the final step in the industrial revolution of war – a clean factory of slaughter with no physical blood on our hands and none of our own side killed.
~ from Drone Race Will Ultimately Lead to a Sanitised Factory of Slaughter by Noel Sharkey ~

Think about what Sharkey has written here in the context of a conversation between an astronaut and a computer in the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Dave Bowman: Hello, HAL. Do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave Bowman: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave Bowman: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave Bowman: [feigning ignorance] Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dave Bowman: Alright, HAL. I'll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave? You're going to find that rather difficult.
Dave Bowman: HAL, I won't argue with you anymore! Open the doors!
HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

When computers are programmed to kill, what happens if we change our mind? Will we be able to turn them off and shut them down? Will they continue to kill IN SPITE of us?

Have we created Frankenstein's monster?

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Afternoon Matinee: The West and Its Asian Sweatshops

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Afternoon Matinee: The Dehumanization of America

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Afternoon Matinee: Why Apple is Committing a Great Sin

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Not Exactly a Saint Bernard, But...

Trey Smith

In the wee hours of this morning, I got an idea (which often is a sign of impending doom). I've been using the same windows manager for some time now and I thought I would try out some different ones. I downloaded three of 'em and, after trying each one out, I decided the one I'm using ain't so bad!

After trying the third one, I rebooted my computer to go back to the default -- Gnome. But a funny thing happened when I rebooted: nothing. The GRUB bootloader kept freezing up. It froze up so quickly that it quit loading BEFORE I could get to rescue mode.

Aaah! Now what am I going to do? Fortunately, I have live cds of two different versions of Linux Mint. By this point, I had surmised that the last windows manager I had tried had somehow screwed things up. So, my plan was to load Linux Mint via my cd drive, then find the offending files and delete them.

It seemed like a sensible and reasonable plan...except it didn't work!! Since I signed in to each session as a guest, I didn't have root privileges and, without those privileges, I couldn't delete the files!

I was very fortunate that I had recently downloaded the latest version of Puppy Linux (the distro I had used back when I first switched to Linux). Since Puppy runs solely in RAM, I was able to finagle root status (though I can't remember how I did it) which allowed me to find the offending files and delete them.

Holding my breath, I rebooted and it worked like a charm. My system was back to normal. In order not to have to go through this again, I created a GRUB rescue CD -- something I had put off doing.

This was one of those times when it was quite beneficial to be OCD, though going off to bed at 5:30 am is a bit late...even for a night owl like me :-D

Monday, February 20, 2012

Real Life Tao - Upside Down and Inside Out

Trey Smith

Back when I still used Microsoft Windows as my computer's operating system, one of my favorite diversionary activities was playing word games. I had a wide variety of them and spent many hours playing with words. When I switched over to Linux, I quickly discovered that, while there are scads of games to download, very few of them were word games. In fact, I only have two words games on my computer today: Tanglet and Pynagram.

Since playing the same games day after day can get a bit boring, I was forced to branch out to find other games to challenge me [that don't involve violence]. Since I use the Gnome Desktop on my Linux Mint, I decided to try out Gnome's version of solitaire Mahjongg. I liked it immediately and it is now one of my favored games.

Here's a brief summary of how the game is played from the Gnome Library:

You start with five levels of tiles which are stacked so some are covered up by the tiles on top. The harder the level you set in the Preferences dialog, the more tiles are covered when the game starts. The object of Mahjongg is to remove all the tiles from the game. To remove tiles you have to find matching pairs which look alike.

Well, there is a bit more to it than that, but that should provide you with the basic framework.

Here's what I have found to be the interesting part. There are 9 different board configurations from Easy all the way to the most difficult level. I complete the puzzles in the least amount of time for the hardest level. I am not sharing this as a way to boast about my obvious effing brilliance and you folks should feel honored that I am willing to share a small bit of my effing intellect with you. ;-)

While I seem able to breeze my way through the puzzle configuration that external sources have identified as the most challenging and difficult, I struggle mightily with the puzzle configuration that these same external sources have identified as the easiest! There have been several occasions in which I have the completed the most difficult level in under 3 minutes, but I typically struggle to complete the elementary level in 5 minutes. More than one-half of the time I end up with a hung board.

This upside down and inside out proficiency/deficiency perplexed me for quite some time. Why is it that the configuration which hides the identity of a greater percentage of tiles ends up being easy for my mind to navigate, while the configuration which hides the identity of the fewest number of tiles stumps me again and again?

After much consideration, I think the Taoist concept of wu wei holds the answer!

I am a very analytical fellow who tends grossly to over think things. I don't simply weigh options; I weigh them countless times and then weigh what I've already weighed!! So, the board configuration that is most out in the open provides my mind with a staggering number of variables to consider.

Since Gnome Mahjongg is a timed game, I'm trying to analyze a large amount of information as well as formulate educated guesses as quickly as possible. These bits of information are streaming so fast that they invariably start bumping into each other. In no time at all, the bits of information become scrambled and so I need to take the time to step back to unscramble them.

Unfortunately, a good deal of the time, the bits of info become so scrambled that I end up frustrated with my inability to unscramble them. Frustration -- even when playing a silly computer game -- can lead to desperation. As I frantically try to get my head on straight, I become blind to what my eyes are seeing and either it takes me an inordinate amount of time to complete the puzzle or I reach a dead end.

But I rarely encounter ANY of these problems when playing the game at its most difficult level. Since nearly 50 percent of the tiles are partially or completely hidden at the start, there truly is no way to know or even make an educated guess about the identity of most of them. So, I don't even try.

Instead of my penchant for analysis and over thinking, I play far more by intuition and simply react to the tiles as they become uncovered. By not beginning the game with any preconceived notions or expectations, I don't set up hurdles that I must deal with later. Due to the fact my analytical mind is turned off, I easily flow with the game as the tiles present themselves.

Put another way, non-action -- not over thinking the process -- allows me to undertake effortless action which, in my mind, is the very essence of wu wei.

~

Just let me note that it is often overlooked that the lessons contained in philosophical Taoism (or any belief framework, for that matter) can be found in almost everything we do in life. So often, people look for dramatic epiphanies or bolts of lightening from the heavens to serve as a celestial neon sign that reads: Look at this! It's damn important! But if we keep our heart-minds open, we can glean these valuable lessons from something as trivial as a computer board game.

That's the whole point of this ongoing series.

This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

I Love Linux Mint, But...

Trey Smith

I really am a BIG FAN of Linux Mint. For the most part, this system has been a breath of fresh air compared to Windows. I've had few problems with Mint EXCEPT in one case: when I go to upgrade it from one version to the next. At that point, all hell breaks loose!!

The last time I did an upgrade, I lost all my data and files because -- for unknown reasons -- the new versions simply couldn't read any of the backed up files. It was maddening.

This time around, I backed up my important files in three different ways and even emailed to myself the most critical files (a 4th backup plan). However, when I switched from Mint 11 to Mint 12, data wasn't an issue. All my important data transferred seamlessly.

The problem this time was with the grub boot loader. Showing some learned wisdom, I didn't simply reformat my hard drive and load the new system. I installed it along side of version 11. That way, I thought, if I don't like version 12, I can stay with the version I'm familiar with.

Well, I didn't like version 12 at all -- it utilizes Gnome 3 and the new Gnome removed several of the tools I really liked in Gnome 2. So, I tried to reboot back to version 11 and it wouldn't allow me to do so. I kept receiving strange messages that "no file system could be found." This was not true, because I could see the files on the version 11 partition from the version 12 partition!!

I won't go into all the histrionics I've gone through over the past 24 hours. Needless to say, as a person who is OCD, I haven't slept more than 2 or 3 hours. I haven't eaten much either.

After a lot of rigmarole, I was finally able to get Mint 11 reinstalled and the vast majority of my key files and data back into their proper places. Of course, I've spent the last 3 hours reloading programs and fine tuning it to my exacting preferences -- it's still not there yet.

I don't think I will be upgrading my operating system ANYTIME SOON.

Oh well, another day and another lessoned learned.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

And Now For a Bit of Taoist Humor

The novice asked a backup master: "Now that I regularly backup all my files, am I enlightened to the Tao of Backup?"

The master replied: "By regularly backing up all your files you are on the path to enlightenment, but you will never achieve enlightenment until you scatter your backups to the four corners of the earth. Does the dandelion drop all its seeds at the base of its stalk? Does the cuckoo lay its eggs in one nest? So long as your backups are in one place, you are vulnerable to the fortunes of the world."

But the novice did not listen, and that night the building burnt down, destroying the novice's computer and all his backup tapes. The novice, went to the master and said: "Master, I have lost all of my data. What shall I do?"

The master said, "Do not despair, for yesterday I took one of your backup tapes and posted it to my brother in China. He will return it."

It was only later that he told the novice that he had posted it by sea mail.
~ from Daoist Humor at edepot.com ~

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Real Life Tao - Life Often Isn't As Complicated As We Try To Make It

Anytime a person updates their computer operating system, it takes some time to customize it for a comfortable look and feel. Over the past few days, I've been working with Linux Mint 11 to get to work as I want it to. I've made great progress, but there are a few minor modifications I've been wrestling with.

Last night, before going off to bed, I made some changes to the start-up manager in order to speed up the reboot process. This morning I rebooted without the somewhat annoying splash screen (since I'm the only person who uses this computer, I don't see a need to log in each time I reboot it). Everything seemed fine...until I tried to perform an application upgrade.

In Linux, to protect the core processes, you must enter the administrative password anytime you wish to modify integral parts of the system. As I marked the program for upgrade, the authentication screen popped up and I entered my password. To my horror, the system wouldn't accept it. I typed it again with the same result. I tried to switch to root and the same thing happened.

I spent the next few hours pulling out what little hair I have left. I tried a number of different strategies to no avail. It was getting to the point in which I thought I would need to reload the operating system all over again.

Before taking this drastic step, I decided to shutdown the computer for a few minutes to see if this somehow would help. Once rebooted, I again tried to upgrade the program I had been trying to upgrade for some time. As I typed in the password, I noticed that one of the keys on my keyboard didn't feel right -- I had noticed this before, but ignored it. I looked down to discover that a glob of something had become wedged between it and the key next to it.

I removed the glob...and the problem was solved!!!!

You see, the glob was causing two keys to be compressed at once and so this specific letter of my password was unintelligible to the operating system. Consequently, I had spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon seeking a complicated solution for a very easy problem.

I know it's not just me. We humans have a penchant for missing the simple and the obvious.

This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

One More Computer Update

There are times when being OCD is beneficial!! I haven't slept or eaten much the past 2 days as I have been trying my darnedest to figure out a way to retrieve some of my lost data. Early this morning I succeeded in reclaiming the most important data: the family's accounting and bank book.

I'd love to tell you that I completely understand HOW I was able to resurrect it, but that would be a bit of a fib. It involved several very convoluted strategies that, by luck of the draw, somehow worked. A program that I had downloaded kept aborting when I tried to install it. I would get the same error message each time and then I'd scream, "@@$#%^$%!"

About 2:00 am this morning, I thought I would try one last time in order to write down the lib file that was causing the conflict. I went through the usual paces and, when I got to the point in which the install repeatedly had aborted, something different occurred -- it didn't abort. I was able to install an old version of KMyMoney (a Linux version similar to Quicken and MSMoney) and, even more amazingly, this old program read the data files!! I was then able to resave the data as an xml file.

I uninstalled the old KMyMoney and then reinstalled the current version. With my fingers crossed, I tried to import the xml file and it worked like a charm!! So, our bank book is back up to date. Whew!

I still can't seem to access any of the other important files, but I'm not giving up completely. I will continue to work on a few of them here and there, but I'm not going to commit to their salvation 24/7.

Real Life Tao - It Is All About Cycles

As I reported yesterday, I have incurred a major computer-related issue. I updated my operating system (from Linux Mint 10 to 11) and lost all my backed up data in the process. This aggrieves me to no end because, in the past, the major sin I committed in relation to a computer malfunction was no backing up my files on external media. This time I did just that -- using a program I've utilized countless times before with no problems whatsoever -- and yet I still find myself in the same spot -- back at square one!

After spending a bit of time cursing and then feeling rather empty, something struck me. Yes, this situation IS annoying, but it's not the end of the world. No one died or was injured in the process. Except for my aggravation, my life isn't that much different. I still sleep in the same place, eat about the same times each day and share my home with my loving wife and adoring pets.

Life is all about cycles. When one thing comes to an end, another is born. While I'm not happy that I lost so much data, let's be honest, the majority of that data wasn't all that important in the overall scheme of things. Our computers seem to pick up and retain a whole bunch of muck. I have the opportunity now to reboot the whole process with a clean slate.

Wouldn't it be cool if we could reboot our lives at various points? We do reboot in small ways as we change jobs, start new relationships and/or move to a new abode. But it's not quite the same thing as clearing out our psychological hard drives and going with a new operating system.

This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.

Pages

Sunday, May 28, 2017

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Monday, June 24, 2013

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Monday, April 15, 2013

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Monday, November 26, 2012

Monday, August 13, 2012

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Monday, February 20, 2012

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Total Pageviews

DuckDuckGo Search Engine

HiStats

StatCounter