Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Didn't fit their agenda

...again.

The latest school shooter, in Arapahoe High School in Colorado, killed himself, but left behind his legacy, a Facebook Page filled with admiration of the left's agenda, according to the Arapahoe County Sheriff.

Let's add it up, shall we?

• Lefty high school student, had recently suffered a personal reverse (failed to place well in a debating group).
• School without adequate security to prevent an assailant from entering with a less-than-concealable long arm.
• School with inadequate armed security (if any, some reports say there was one resource officer, some don't say that). It WAS a gun-free zone.

Nope, didn't fit the agenda. Put away the blood-dancing shoes. Freeze the gun-control commentaries in the press. Too much danger of the shooter being properly identified as lefty-looney, therby killing off the Marxist "necessity" for a gun-control push.

The gun-controllers are losing because their case is shallow, over-hyped AND it fails strict scrutiny of the Constitution.

Computer security bleg

After reading this.

In a Windoze 7 box, after going into Control Panel/Devices/Imaging/(the webcam), then right-click, drill to "disable" and click, can the webcam be remotely activated?

The action above changes a Registry value, so any attempt to turn the webcam back on would have to come via a Trojan which could change Registry values, right?

My antivirus alarms on all such attempts which do not come from the Administrator, and requires my approval to permit the change, so I'm safe, right?

Of course, a low-tech solution may be best: grab some blue masking tape and cover the webcam. If you need to use the cam for a video conference, pull off the tape and replace it when the conference is over. The same goes for those TV webcams, or any wireless/networked security cams on your property, all can be intercepted by the gummint or your neighborhood pervert. It costs $1500 to hardwire 4 exterior security cams but they can't be intercepted unless/until you put them on the 'Net.

Security exercise

Start of exercise

RclAuTH3RACiSMpgXlsSepgWyBvLtrH9FmMqR6mqWvCvTcZqa0jlhrzgS
0XuKdHb9Olm8WaaUaOOEQBVh5AyRLfQWtohaJb1U7eIGVZZNwyatsDPas
fAuWS1zZJqgIv3yTyrUOwxC6h0PnXthMf0MOPF
mlLLUlKS0ZJcYc0jn0U
OgM8Fccug0fRY8h1dj6lOL0mJ9Gbs571V6Z2Gf
J1xcvlMH4Ln2kwiotQs
vgUYTxkziYzqW7oK0Mv1rUrdJe8BKSNS0vRuRE
eEXtOa2xM1yFxth0xyg

BzdqzlZERoseXbf6LqLGWzvpvu1j1WOViy8O5bFoKHwyOnoWQAebkQmds
hRdc4MlEwVKc7l3S3h0Znyr0FxuFbi8p8L7i3w
EqzVhKX3ZKg17Tg0Edk
sixf8aXBUxa3VhUTq6sap9ogurMQlyvL58wP8BRUsTWVPufA73D9zhbel
rXL9wCG2QSfw4rFtUAWdrJI4TyEr1V7zBEoMKJ
UMe9WvIWrgpSw2MSN41
oWZxs4CppaqfuYQrtDuMXPdswpInUyZTkKF4ix5iDTx186uw80ckSIVB7
OHl83xgIN8DHNdevQ5goLIFy6kjVrbmrYxLdLf
GugT6KobuBTBZTKE9IfRBdX3qKx9qpOSFlL7LJ
PeDeZV1nODljraubWPO

TaemnWyBQnz1sydjGCZZO81TKYjpY2FFdNL25Q
Gu24uxgnIwJQV29DORB
LD7o4bk0D8VTlpDlB24zc0DUA93HbHGHUj52OeVfdd7xnZplAjdApNNhe
m6LuPubQTDhtVhaGtdU
k8ouOqfyoIqcObmRHWVm3DhHG3hmc4EesE4t30
n0ILPebVguemTMMVnKs
whHjfzpEtTaDz65Xtrs5JpPbcCAwW6WBJHzWjE
BYF8Ev0LGKOB3na92os
DZv667Kuh4lDTBzN6zV7e5AU7X3OzdScmThXdP
Lz0w6dUcgsE5ApvSsgC

P99HmRcJX3wFBXTjzbx
dvbYGlUGSbLeQVnL8Pa
tQ8xt6mNC58zW4qQ4WY
msfDaMrELTHETKi1cYU
CnThzMdfGwvGfuBR44y
NgyHSzUWWM6R2Jp2voh
3UVaKhenoak2XOlXBgH
uXUbIbg6k9cCRTZsnEG
gZ4Udx0ugSWKtjq2gqF
Pvipr998toBwtiKHZLS
oZiO6wRTrIP9yTWJUKv
aBg0fkyBAa0vs10cozc
auXI2UNwcptuE11cnyG
LNyTr657yArCBP4jZRT
2A8XV226WhBLwsuEROODrRzzPpPEM3viQZtIEv0PAjy69pHXuF0Q0xVVgeDEkXPSoQVdFfCe0GzZ
fhdyOPaAB1uuT7xdZfy
gUapvsF2N6HrnzRhDZq
7Ld19KO47wI6qruF8Rb
NbJv5HVlzT1fUZqAJsB
VbW4AKATMW4wDqPYwyp7z5RZka0IOlrrBtF4k7HakrWcHaUuYGkz401YI7dK4eeLvGDMlPxkRLLy
3fYK2ejZFGogXlmA8TY
qg5N0Q7XeTpWwK05x7r
LOW54yeP2wOP2gB9hUR
IYe8MmnDy4Z7PnvQTs4
4nENg8ak1vR6oYknrgz
dtoD2wYmIl7gEdXqeVW
CDrBRtTpEJmGuKy4YZZ
tL4fIM2nixuxD9N6Rb1
kuqcnVhs1pC52rw6yZMevnLOPCt0h2137iin3VJFYsRDGa8H0nXK0zB5dFPCPR123AP
6kZ9PXadpAoodXYCSBq
UsSBbdoccve5ASCDP4X
YJPAYNARqjDmLz1RT3x
5RUutQdCxms2LS8Dt8I
6OaXXLPmZ9XphhKYcAd
SVXcNAn5p8yZhctdzPp
DEa20rpuxx3a3kumGdiE2LYvy9MXzKRbTmLAvOtvJiqqgwdytgubgKDtxmVrvRBFvCuaDnYwTSAVPh8ExGH2QjRn6MuzVsv
CCiRDOH7FaMJSCmYy0W

End of exercise

Thursday Thud

This ayem I awaken from indifferent dreams, pry open the crusty old eyes, reach for my tablet and open my email.

This is on top of the stack at the perspac addy:

Rivrdog.typepad.com Team,

I thought you might like to know some reasons why you are not getting enough Social Media and Organic search engine traffic for Rivrdog.typepad.com.

1. Your website Rivrdog.typepad.com is not ranking top in Google organic searches for many competitive keyword phrases.

2. Your company is not doing well in most of the Social Media Websites.

3. Your site is not user friendly on mobile devices.

There are many additional improvements that could be made to your website, and if you would like to learn about them, and are curious to know what our working together would involve, then I would be glad to provide you with a detailed analysis in the form of aWEBSITE AUDIT REPORT for FREE.

Our clients consistently tell us that their customers find them because they are at the top of the Google search rankings. Being at the top left of Google (#1- #3 organic positions) is the best thing you can do for your company's website traffic and online reputation. You will be happy to know that, my team is willing to guarantee you 1^st page Google ranking for most of your targetted keyword phrases in our six month ongoing campaign.

Sound interesting? Feel free to email us or alternatively you can provide me with your phone number and the best time to call you. I am also available to meet you in person and present you this website audit report.
------------------------------ ------------------------------ -----
Best Regards,
Name Redacted
Marketing Consultant

PS I: I am not spamming. I have studied your website and believe I can help with your business promotion. If you still want us to not contact you, you can ignore this email or ask to remove and I will not contact again.

PS II: I found your site using Google search and after having a look over your website I recommend you to implement future technologies such as HTML5 and Responsive Design to make your site more accessible in mobile phone, tablets, desktop etc.

I am immediately struck by the full force of a huge gravity-wave of ignorance coated with lies.

• This schmuck did NOT read my blog at all. Had he done so, he would have detected immediately that this is not a "company", just a collection of thought from an individual.
• This schmuck doesn't even know how to push the spell-checker button on his text editor.
• He never tried out Rivrdog on an Android device, it comes in just fine, and I have read it easily on a Windows Phone as well. I don't own the other brand which charges for shit I get for free on Droids.
• If he really had looked at my blog, he would have noted that it used to be hammered by as many as 2,000 pageviews/day, but then I quit posting gratuitous porn several years back, and lost about 3/4 of my readership. BTW, almost all that readership was from Islamic countries in the Middle East.
• If he had really, REALLY looked at the blog, he would have found the post I wrote several years ago addressing this exact subject, and noting that I was NOT going to turn the blog commercial, because the headhunters at the IRS were said to be compiling lists of those who did so, and bloggers might expect an unfriendly audit.
• As far as Social Media goes, I was probably using it before this schmuck was, and I noted that it did nothing for my numbers.

This blog has two over-arching goals, to teach and inform on issues of the day, and a secondary goal of allowing me to express my feelings on any subject. Expressing them now, you sir, are a schmuck, a liar and a boil on a pox on a pustule on the ass of the planet.

THAT is what we call a Thursday Thud. I might regret it, not having read the news of the day yet, but I am going to award this schmuck the Effinger of the Day, Dummy of the Week AND Maroon of the Month awards.

Fuck him and the horse he rode in on. 

 

Apologies

...for having to do moderation of comments. There's a troll war going on here, and this is a civilized blog, so I will post moderated comment several times a day. No biggie, I have had this annoyance before.

The trolls seem to be a pair of Trayvon-slut wannabes. I have changed some of their words to make them seem more humble than they really are....

Let's see how many trolls want to have to work against moderation. If my guess is correct, moderation will end their bile here. They'll go somewhere there isn't any moderation. They can shitbomb my email addy all they want, I have mass delete capability over there...

Facebook fails it's own rules

Friend of mine (real friend, not just FB "friend") noted that a Facebook account named "Kill Zimmerman" had opened up, and by it's first posts, appeared to be attracting sentiment appropriate to it's title.

Friend complains to Facebook, insisting that under their own rules, no one may use an account for directly advocating interpersonal violence, and he demanded that FB take down the site.

Facebook denied his complaint, so we have to assume one of two things:

1. Facebook does not see that a site dedicated to finding and killing Zimmerman is any sort of threat to Zimmerman, or
2. Facebook granted this site a waiver from the rules.

Mister Zuckerberg, you need to either clean house at your company, or you need to admit that you have a serious double standard in place.

What do you suppose would happen to MY efforts to sow hate and discontent if I tried to open an account named "Kill more Martins"? I'd get that split-second knock on the door, followed by the usual flashbangs, and have the FBI SWAT team trash my house and me. After I bailed out of jail, I'd have to deal with the angry envirowhackos, too (Purple Martins are "Endangered").

Nope, Facebook rules are for the hoi-palloi. Liberal Crusaders don't have to follow them.

BTW, why did this NOT make Fox News? Are they in on the fix here with the rest of the MSM?

App coders: free idea

In two months, I will have been blogging here for eight years, and will have written close to 4,000 posts. I try not to count chickens before they hatch, or measure water before it runs under the bridge, but still, that's an accomplishment. Too bad there's no widget for blogging into book format. Maybe I should commission one for Droid, then e-reader peeps could read this screed, too.

Connection?

There's no humor here, but there might be an explanation of the mind-set that could allow one person to commit such an atrocity. The technology of broadcasting your thoughts, as illustrated by your blogger in this blog, for example, might be a reason that we are self-absorbed, that we disregard the best proven teachings of the culture.

We are so, so, "whatever".

But we are NOT faithful to the culture.

It's always "what my BFF said" or "what MC Gangstapunk rapped", but it's never "what Thomas Aquinas said" or "what John Locke said", is it?

We have shrugged off the brilliant minds who built our superior culture, and replaced them with..."Whatever".

The technology, or rather the abuse of it, did that to us.

I'm NOT going to say "reject the technology", because it is the same technology that enables us to carry the entire brilliant works of the culture on one pocket-sized device, so this same technology which gives rise to unfathomable evil can also save us from that evil.

It can only save us, though, if we choose to use it for navigation on that path. If we choose to use it to simply divert our minds from the ennui of having to live too close to one another, we have failed to realize the primary strength of the technology.

Whatever.

H/T to Country Gal, who I should probably promote to "bff"

 

Rivrdog attacked - Updated

...sideways attack. On my email addy, the Comcast one for those who use it. The yahulian addy for this blog seems to still be upright. It was the master addy, I have several other ComCrap addys and they weren't hit.

Could be a massive penetration of ComCrap, because there is a monster backlog at the help desk. I intercepted one of the messages, which came from a PA addy on Comcrap (prolly a zombie puter) and it was addressed via me to some business I never used on the Least Coast. There were four others like it, all to different businesses. The evil wizard figured out how to keep ComCrap's security system from notifying me that my password and secrit question had been changed, but the targeted businesses seemed to be well enough protected by the system which didn't let the monster long messages through. They were composed of thousands of words of rambly disconnected sentences in decent English, appearing to be cut and pasted out of some college Lit course.

At first I reset just the P/W, and restored service, but got hijacked a second time, so reset all the security items. Trend Micro hasn't found anything, is about finished with a deep scan. Pretty sure the penetration was at ComCrap, not in my network.

Ain't Winderz wunnerfall?

******************************************************************************

UPDATE 12062012: 0759 PST: Email hacked again overnight, but got through to ComCrap techies this ayem and had a console-change done on the password & PIN, then went online and changed the sooper-secrit question to a different category and used a long alpha-numeric-punctuation-both case string instead of the usual name in one of the name categories. We'll see. If THIS security update holds, we're just dealing with a smart hacker-bot which got into ComCrap's shorts, but if I gets hacked again, we're dealing with a person with some intent, and that person probably reads this blog.

So, Mister Hacker, can you run faster than 1,000 feet per second? You can? Okay then, how about 3,000 feet per second? You DO leave a trail, ya know, and I have that trail safe in standalone memory now. When my urge to end your annoyance gets strong enough, we'll meet face to face, and you won't like what happens next.

 

Mucked-Up Monday

I arise today at a reasonable hour, and decide to reconcile my checking account, which I haven't done in 12 days. At the 'puter, I click open the Credit Union web page, and note that it has been completely re-designed. Hmmmm...the hairs on the back of my neck start to tingle (I am the RivrDOG, after all!).

I find the log-in tab, and click it. It opens very slowly, and so I insert my account number and click on "Password", which fails to take the password I type. Hmmmm. I change from Chrome to Internet Exploder and try again. No joy.

I go back to Chrome and re-enter everything, but now use the "tab" key to get to the password box, and now it takes my password, but when I click "go", it doesn't go, and I get a FUBAR box from Chrome. Back to Exploder, do the same, get the same result. Go back, do it all over again, this time using the keyboard Enter key to enter instead of mouse-clicking on "go". Still FUBAR.

I started to try to access this account (into which ALL my pension deposits are electronically made, and out of which I pay all bills) @ 0745 local, and it is now 0905, and the CU is actually open, but still no fix. I have been on "hold" on the phone for over and hour, and have no answer, just hold ads. I read blogs for an hour to pass the time while on hold.

It's payday, too, and if this keeps up, I will have been denied almost $7K in incoming funds.

This about rips it with me for this CU. I have done business with them for almost 40 years, but they cheap out on everything. In this case, their mistake is obvious: they changed everything to have the newest and latest web-page, but failed to post their IT guy to 24-hour monitoring of it to make sure all the new server links stayed up and working.

This is also the age of robo-calling, and the farging CU COULD have had a robo-call sent out to all the members to advise them of the outage, but they didn't do THAT, either.

******************************************

The issue got resolved about 0915, 1.5 hours after I discovered it. I had to redial the CU, the hold music went nowhere, and after the staff took their desks for the business day, no one picked up that line. GRRRRRR! After redialing, I get a staff member, and she discovers that in the last five minutes, the system had just come back up.

Tomorrow is the Annual Meeting, so I might just have to drop by the CU and pose a question from the floor to the CEO of why the CU either does not have a 24-7 IT guy, or subscribe to a monitoring service, or have ANY way to report an online banking outage when the office is closed. Saving the members' money is one thing, but when they are so cheap as to make online banking useless with their inattention because they won't pay for some system to monitor and report to the IT manager, then they're saving TOO many shekels.