This is a picture of Frenchie's, a restaurant that is really a watering hole. A lot of French-Canadians from Québec hang out there. It's dead six months of the year but come winter it's kind of funny to bike past there and hear them speaking French a mile a minute. Technically most of these people are here illegally. Those cars and motorcycles have foreign license plates, but nobody ever complains because, “At least they have medical and bring their own money”.
I've probably mentioned it before: around 135,000 of these snowbirds show up every year just in this area. Most of them have made very novel arrangements to pretend they're still in Canada. For instance, there are places you can cash any Canadian welfare or unemployment check, and doctors you can visit whose billing address is in Toronto, the capital of Canada.Since I don't have the trailer money yet, I'm going to spend some time going over tutorials with Dragon Naturally Speaking. I'm well past the beginner stage and it is doing things I don't like, such as beginning a sentence when ever it pleases. The other advantages are so great that I intend to use it if I possibly can. It is designed for dummies and I found I had to go in and turn off most of the automatic features.
That also means it types and does things that you have to watch out for. I now estimate approximately a week of dedicated part-time study is required to master the software. The reason I got so much study time and is because of a cold spell. My cold-weather habit is to curl up under a quilt with a good book and a huge pot of coffee. Works for me.
I was treated to a first-class example of the brand of idiot that the education system is churning out today, a so-called computer whiz. I watched her sit down at one of my rental computers and promptly and efficiently start doing all the things you should never do with a computer. Just because they teach in school that something can be done, such as watching live streaming video from a non-trusted site, doesn't mean that's something wise to do.
My antivirus is set to make that “ka-tung” sound to warn of a virus attack. As it began to ring constantly I looked up from my cubicle and watched her turn the speaker off. That noise was bothering her. Mind you, it was partially my fault. That was the computer I have installed this program on and I had left it logged on as an administrator.
She normally uses a limited account but instantly detected it was in administrator mode. Instead of getting on with her business, the first thing she did was to try to install a bunch of known virus-ridden and problematic software. LimeWire, BearShare, and applications that are known to alter the computer registry, such as Microsoft Outlook Express, iTunes, and AOL Instant Messenger.
It goes to show you can’t turn your back on these dick-heads even for a moment, or they'll screw you around. She saw no distinction between using a rental computer and messing up property that belonged to somebody else. For that matter, she said she had a right to install software on my computer “so it would work right”. I reminded her she had to bring her own computer in several times this year for expensive repairs. Then I promptly changed all my passwords. A few minutes later she managed to lock up the print spooler. This woman is an IT graduate of Broward Community College.
ADDENDUM
I stand corrected. Toronto is the capital of Ontario. The capital of Canada is, um, er, it's some other town. The situation in Canada has parallels to what we have here in the United States. Them Easterners are nothing but a pack of con men, horse thieves, liars, crooked politicians and tax collectors and the best thing that could happen is for the lot of them to fall into the Atlantic Ocean. That could be what happens to anything northeast of Kentucky if Ron Paul gets elected next year.
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