One year ago today: January 1, 2020, raised in captivity.
Five years ago today: January 1, 2016, off-roundedness.
Nine years ago today: January 1, 2012, Sawgrass Mills, ho-hum.
Random years ago today: January 1, 1977, the mistakes are original.
New Year’s and our lily-livered FCC (the phone people) have yet another anemic rule in place. This degenerate bureacracy doesn’t have the balls to outlaw robocalls, which is what the huge majority of Americans want. Instead the FCC splits the crap up into categoris such as “non-commercial”, “non-profit”, and “unwanted”, like any of the people with phones give a damn. Want to make zillions? Invent a phone where the user punches in the numbers from which he will accept calls. I’ll give you $500 for such a phone. With a feature that any telemarket call can be routed in progress to the home phone of the FCC honcho.
It’s one of those towns that once you go there often enough to get to know the place, you discover there really is nothing there. Law offices that close early and barber shops. As last visit, there was not even any place to grab a coffee, my standard routine too check out a new town. The first thing I did on the built-in GPS was clear the memory banks. Once again, I underestimated how truly stupid GPS coders can be. It’s sad, because GPS was a great concept until they came along and turned it into a sick joke. I plugged in Dunken Donuts to find the nearest. It directed me 902 miles to New Jersey. Yep, it takes a whole special kind of stupid to create stuff like that. There, I said it.
Here is your view of downtown Murfreesboro midday, what a bustling metropoilis. Maybe the state funds the town to be near Nashville, but to serve as the most un-Nashville town in Tennessee. The State legislature is that crazy, you know. This was the initial longer trip with the minivan, which performs admirably but does show signs of its age and mileage. It makes creaking noises as it cools down. It took this much time to adapt to the different handling characteristics.
What is different in the minivan, other than it is a truck outfitted to drive like a car? Two things made immediate impressions. One is that 4.0 liter motor, a V-6. Except for recently, 90% of my driving has been motorcycle, and of the rest, the Taurus. It’s peppy but not enough to drive around idiots, which America nowadays has plenty. What a difference the extra power makes. Millies l ike to pull up into your driver’s side blind spot and stay there, especially if they know there is a turn lane ahead they can make you miss. Now, just tap the pedal and cut them off, not that I would ever do such a thing.
The second plus is sitting up a foot higher than before. You can spot developing situations farther away than the Taurus. Where you step down into the car, you step up into the van, maybe more than a foot of difference. In the Taurus, you had to wait for a situation such as just described above. Now you can beat the bad drivers at their own game. What? You want examples? Okay.
I used to only suspect people from miles behind on an empty road would slowly gain on you and start tailgaiting. Now, I can see them do it The interior switch has three settings instead of the orthodox two. You can momentarily click on the rear parking lights, causing the tailgater to think you’ve slammed on your brakes. Seems to work just fine. Then, as they get infuriated and pass, you can speed up slightly.
Because you just know they are going to cut in front at 75 mph, as if they are in city traffic. Now, just ease up and they are the proper five or six car-lengths ahead, harmless, and speeding in case there’s a rookie cop on patrol. I’think I’m being sold on this minivan concept.
Vertical farming, indoors.
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As promised, here is how to disable the Meet Now spyware Windows cloaked as a stylus update. It is in the registry, so you can’t realistically delete it and future bogus updates would just reactivate it anyway. This involves using the digital word “HIDE” command, but don’t confuse this with only removing the icon, as other instructions do. This version will prevent the startup mode from seeing the code which is appropriately named SCAMeetNow. I am going to presume you have the home version of Windows 10. MicroSoft can and WILL use this app to remotely turn on your computer camera if you do not take steps to prevent it. Here’s how.
It is buried deep, so set aside up to 15 minutes for the operation. This involves using your registry editor, which if you don’t know how to pull up, I won’t tell you because that means you should not even try this fix. You will use the task bar icon "Meet Now" to test if your task is successful. Close all your work, you will have to reboot afterward. You will be operating around ten layers deep, so allow extra time for your computer to reboot afterward. Be patient.
A) open the folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE*, scroll down,
B) open the folder SOFTWARE, scroll down,
C) open the folder Microsoft, scroll down, down, down
D) open the folder Windows,
E) open the folder CurrentVersion, scroll down,
F) open the folder POLICIES,**
G) click on Explorer and look at the screen panel to the right.
You are going to place a new DWORD command in this area.
1) right-click on the word Explorer to expose the sub-menu
2) from the sub-menu, mouse-over the word New
3) from New, mouse-over and down to DWORD (32-bit) Value, click on it
4) observe a new text box saying “New Value #”
5) edit this “New Value #” to read “HideSCAMeetNow” (exactly as spelled here)
6) right-click on the new “HideSCAMeetNow” and choose Modify...
7) a small panel opens, find the text box that shows a “0”.
8) change the “0” to a “1”, click the OK button
9) close the registry and reboot.
10) confirm the task bar icon is gone.
*CAREFUL not to choose the HKEY_LOCAL_USER folder.
**there are several folders named POLICIES, if you do not see the options listed here, you are in the wrong one. Go back and start over.
That was likely a tough go for many, so here is a cheerful picture from Murfreesboro. This is the window display at a barber shop near the downtown bell tower. It’s a sure bet which place the kids want a haircut. Would have worked on me for sure, except I was only in a barber shop once as a lad. After that, the old man bought a set of clippers and I had a mohawk before you did, I’ll bet.
The whole display is huge, filling two windows. I do not know if the trains run or are just for show. The walk around all of the city center takes maybe twenty minutes. Very few cafes and no coffee shops. It was a breezy 78F. I did finally find a Dunkin Donuts. It was closed. If you get desperate, there is a McDonalds out on the bypass. If I ever get to Murfreesboro again, it will be because there is a trade school in the area.
ADDENDUM
Like many Americans, my political understanding is based on a single “political science” lesson back in grade school. We learned how the various agencies and departments worked together in theory, never how they clashed in practice So y’day brought some announcement that a single Republican senator would reject the Biden voter fraud. I don’t understand why all Republican senators have not done that already?
It seems there is somebody in the system that has been “working hard” to prevent even one Republican from doing what just happened. Who is this person (Mitch McConnell) that can terrify and buff so many senators? His title is Senate Majority Leader, so why is he not doing their bidding? And why does not the party in power have such a person that can do the same to the other side, as it were? I just want the simple answer, not embark up the learning curve.
