When not very much is a lot

What haven't I been up to?  Writing, mostly.  Pretty obvious, once you get down to it.  Low output is not due to lack of interesting topics, just lack of time and energy by filling those up with other fun things in life.

Have I gotten the Pico-ITX system up and running?  Not yet, I'm down to a bit of drilling on hardened metals and metal laminates which is actually pretty labor intensive without a drill press.  That and even those rugged drill bits meant to go through such metals just aren't up to the job.  Pieces and parts-wise I am still lacking the 2.00mm pitch connectors with lead wire and may be looking to scrap some older notebook cabling for that.  That is not a great solution, as it will also require me to get a small soldering iron and other accoutrements for protecting such solder joins.  Temporarily back burnered.

Spending time to decide on the purchase of a pistol that has some historical background to it, although of new manufacture, really puts it out of the 'pistol' category, save for the legal definition of same.  That is the one that needs the magazine catch modified to accept older, historical ammunition magazines which are really quite cheap to get as they are military surplus.  So I prefer to have the more expensive, though modern, firearm slightly altered rather than degrade a piece of history.  One or two other mods will be wanted, and there is, apparently, one very reputable gunsmith for that specific line of firearm.  I will be contacting a couple of others just to scope out the field, but someone that knows what they are doing is worth paying for.

Finding and purchasing the necessary extras for cleaning said pistol: takes time.

For various reasons a family member left a couple of long arms in my care, that haven't seen any real use since... ahhh... 20 years?  30?  40?  Quite awhile, at least, and not actively used much even then.  So I offered to do the old 'strip down and check everything out' deal, plus want to do some of the necessary purchasing of supplies for same, etc.  That meant more trolling of message boards, more checking out of brushes, mops, etc. and, generally, spending way too much time finding the few sites that have just what I need.  Plus if a site has one thing, I try to make sure it has others that are at least decent in price so I can do a mass buy, instead of 'a purchase here, a purchase there' and all on different delivery schedules so you end up waiting weeks for the lowest cost piece to arrive that is absolutely necessary.  Luckily these are both well known long arms - a Mossberg 190KA shotgun and a GWA Marlin 60, both pre-1960.  Fun to find the actual cost for those then, and see that the first has not even kept its value and the second is still in production for low cost.  Who knew that the Marlin 60 was so beloved by so many that it was smart just to keep production going with minor modifications?

As neither have had a good going over for so long, and the rifle has some plastic parts that have been reported to get brittle with age, a full strip-down is necessary.  Luckily, I can find parts for both, in case anything needs to go on them.  Want to do just a touch of updating on the shotgun, on the recoil pad and possibly bead sight.  Plus I need to learn a bit on the care and maintenance of the wood involved, although my cleaners are guaranteed safe in case it gets on wood, still...

There have been lots of minor household things going on to prepare for winter, replace the bed, and other such fun things.  A dehumidifier decided to seize up and die, so a replacement for that is necessary.

To say I haven't been doing any writing isn't specifically true: I have been trying out a piece of software to help parse and chapter my novel ideas.  It is called yWriter and appears to do just what I need it to do, and can even be carried around on a memory stick.  So its been time to re-read the works and start to clean up a bit of syntax, spelling and other fun things that need cleaning up - the obvious stuff.  A deeper reading for timeline, continuity and such will be necessary after that.  I have posted the original material, unchaptered and such, online at my blog site for accumulating my fictional works, plus anything else of interest in that realm.

I have a few places I can get foam for some storage cases I picked up (nice mil surplus aluminum ones) but prefer to keep my time cutting foam to a minimum...

Ahhhh... tons of little things to eat up time.  Such is life.  I don't expect longer blocks to become available for some months, so that means lighter postings, shorter works and updates on things I have fun at even if no one else likes them.  Plus it is always interesting to see just how fast the Democratic Party wants to create the next Great Depression on a global scale.  Apparently they didn't get the message that FDR's work the first time around made things worse and delayed the recovery for years.  Still the economy had recovered pretty well early on... it was just that nasty recession that made things appear to not get much of anywhere.  One caused by increased taxation, increased regulation and a general taking of productive funds from the economy by the government.

Not bothering to learn that lesson, we appear doomed to repeat it to satisfy 'progressive' politics, which seems to leave us over regulated, over taxed, and under employed... plus sicker as health care gets rationed by such sweet bureaucracy to make everyone 'better'.  Soon, I am sure, Congress will outlaw the common cold.... King Canute never had that sort of ego.

Just what have I been up to?

For those that may pass by, that question may arise, as my posting rate has gone downwards. I had predicted such, but for other reasons. Namely - moving. That got put off due to the health concerns of a loved one and that has kept me in the environs of NoVA that I do not adore, climate-wise. Along with those concerns comes having to get a bit more done around here, due to the problems of said loved one. Ahhhh... if only I were healthy, I wouldn't be blogging!

After that comes the lovely task of 'digital equipment refresh'. What is that, you may wonder? Well, due to the pace of change for computer equipment, the good things put in 3 or more years ago start to show their age as software and time start to take their toll. Beyond defragmenting hard-drives and such nice things, also updating of drivers may point to a BIOS needing upgraded which then ensues that overhead. When that is done you find that the system sub-components may have garnered some system overhead... which slows things down. And then there are the add-ons, 'neat things to try out', software updates (in which the software itself runs just a bit slower to be more 'secure'), and all the various little things that begin to encrust an operating system. This stuff is known as 'cruft' and after 3 years you either need to scrub it all down to the bare essentials and start over... which entails ensuring that re-installed software can, actually, re-install properly.... or... yes, starting over with a new system and moving data files over.

Another family member needed a new system for basic gaming, word processing, and such, plus net surfing, so I started out a few weeks back on that. In doing so I got refreshed on the current state of the art technology, which I had let slide since 2004. Before 2004 the entire PC industry had shifted from 'business' support to 'gaming support' for platforms with 'multimedia' growing up around *that*. Any system that could reliably handle games, would also have enough power to run any business application for the desktop AND have multimedia horsepower to spare. Gaming drove the PC industry on innovation, and still does to a large extent. The minimal necessary computing platform for all desktop business applications (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, desktop database work) was basically met in or around 2000 by the PC industry. By 2003 the force of innovation and change moved from those apps to games, and that would then meld with things like HDTV and wanting to watch hours of video driven by a computer, and that got added into gaming specs.

So, distracted from the rest of the world by computing happened with that system buy (which someone *else* gets to troubleshoot!), but that brought to my attention another problem that had been getting to me for the last couple of years: my sluggish Desknote. The Desknote concept is: there are a class of travelers who need a light, portable, all-in-one PC that is not a laptop or notebook. By eliminating 'on the run' usage and targeting 'in your hotel room' and presentation use, the Desknote came in handy for mobile computing with fixed point use. I got one of those to supplement my working life and it transformed into my 'kitchen table computer' for tracking my needs while my health severely deteriorated. By shifting my tracking of insulin use and such to a spreadsheet, with formulas used to balance blood glucase, carbohydrate intake and insulin use, even during the worse of my catalepsy, I had a good and solid way to maintain my health in that area. Without that, I would probably not be here as my ability to track much of anything during those dark days was minimal.

Realizing the good that the device did me, its ability to actually do simple things like switch between tasks, was becoming a problem. Additionally some applications that used to run on that older computing platform had met their end-of-lifecycle-support for it. As I still face moving in the near future, I needed something reliable, capable and able to stay more or less 'as-is' once it got put down. After looking at scads of options, I was faced with either a more expensive system from a Build-To-Order dealer or something like a refurbished Dell.

Now, as a DIY builder of PCs, I had experienced a Dell *once* back in the late 1990's and that entailed: removing every bit of Dell software put on the poor thing so that it could operate well. I looked at a neat and clean list from the BTO shop and the list from Dell...spec to spec equivalent (although pluses and minuses) both sides, but a refurbished Dell looked good and so I purchased that. An Inspiron 1721, with extra hard drive and a few options I didn't want but had no choice on with a refurb unit. I thought I knew what I was getting into....

The plus side is excellent: good, integrated set-up for updating drivers, BIOS (Wow! the world *has* changed as that used to be a boot to floppy with updates and pray that it worked sort of deal before things way back pre-2004), software... excellent work. Kudos for Dell on that, and for keeping up with the industry to do that.

The negative of that: the software is damned intrusive, constantly pestering, eats up processing time and deserves to be shot. I do *not* want to pay for an upgrade to ANYTHING, nor do I want my problems tracked or my location, or a myriad of other things to give me a 'Dell Experience'. After getting everything up-to-date, the good went out with the bad, and I un-installed the stuff. It still sits on their 'emergency recovery disk area' which I will look at ways to reclaim once it is out of warranty.

The ugly: McAfee Anti-Virus. Seven or so years ago I could recommend it, as it was relatively efficient compared to its competitors. Back around 2004-05 I could not recommend it as it became a resource pig and I sent it squealing from my main system and put in Avast!, as seen in my sidebar. Free for personal use, always hitting in the top 5 of AV systems and often #1 or 2, it is a proven winner. It has relatively low overhead compared to McAfee, and the slow-down of McAfee on my system took what should have been, at most, an hour's work to remove the unwanted Dell software to something like 2 days. Getting rid of IT took another hour. Banished and gone, save the recovery area, and I now know what to get rid of *first* if some strange disaster strikes to wipe out my OS.

The truly awful: Windows Vista. As a refurb I couldn't get a nice, old copy of XP on it and, as previously put forth by me, I will not be switching Operating System bases anytime soon. When Windows 2000 came out, I spent time turning off a few bells and whistles to make it a nice WinNT upgrade. When WinXP came out, I saw that the amount of pre-loaded cruft on the OS was large and installed that on exactly *one* computer and then removed the cruft, disabled the bells and whistles, and got it down to something closer to Win2K which I wanted to be more like WinNT. Windows Vista is the Phyllis Diller of Operating Systems: no matter how much lipstick you put on it, it will never be beautiful. Getting those things found, disabled, turned off, muted, or sidetracked to never open has taken more than two days.

A note to the computer industry: the Personal Computer should meet personal needs. No matter how *nice* a special effect is, it eats up processor time, and I say to thee NAY! If Microsoft wanted to *really* impress me, it would allow the individual to select an absolutely stripped down GUI with the ability to add on a function here or there. Let me decide on the level of glitz as your idea of glitz and mine are absolutely different things. Whatever you do, do *not* have them all enabled as a standard distribution setting: they eat up enough processor time to make a decent and capable system (if not speedy) no better than its compatriot that I am replacing with a technology benchmark that was middling in 2003... running Win2K.

Ditto that to Dell - if I want obtrusive hand-holding, let me decide on the service package, ok? And on the pre-installed junk so that at first-time start-up I can be given a choice of installing stuff or *not*. As you already dictate a section of memory for it to 'recover' a system, just leave it there if I don't want it.

After that getting software installed (almost all of it FREE!) was just time net downloading, installing and running. Transfer a few files to a little key disk and shut the Desknote down and put the Inspiron up only took a bit to figure out wireless networking...

That I am addressing *next* as the ancient Linksys wireless router has always (and I do mean always) keeping a decent signal in my townhome. I get a better ability to hold a signal from the guy next door on the other side of his place. The ancient Linksys, bought way back when 802.11g was new (and I have updated its firmware) has never been satisfactory and becomes less so over time. After years of buying Linksys (now part of Cisco), I will give their competitor a try and see how a brand new D-Link gaming wireless router works out.

As sidelights other equipment has come in for home needs for ease of access to sitting in the bathtub and to dehumidify the main floor on the house. Plus minor computer problems I have addressed previously.

A new thing to go after the remains of my treatment for the skin infection I had, I started to use Defense Soap. Normally I'm not so hot on 'all natural' deals, but for anti-fungal needs I had enough of the high end and wanted to try a different method. So far, so good! Along most of the area where the small amounts of intractable fungal infection have not left, they are going away. Plus I got the travel kit from the Defense Soap folks and will be using their products for the next few months and, at this rate, my guess is that it will do better than all the high priced skin stuff I have used for the last year or so. The only downside: you are left smelling like an aggressive herb salad. Also it is slightly soporific but I have been dealing with *that* since 2004.

Through all of that I was able to put up that piece on the Red Mafia, which you would not want to hear me bitch about the time *that* took, and a few other posts and scattered commentary. Yes I am rolling up another couple of posts... but they are still in the 'research and input' stage.

I have been massively impressed by the US Armed Forces in Iraq, and they are bringing about the fastest change-over in a COIN operation on record. The folks in Iraq will have Iran, Syria and various Islamic terror groups to deal with for the forseeable future...but that is their National problem, not ours. If the can get the violence down to levels seen in Turkey, then that will be something that no naysayer could ever have predicted and which will be the start of a massive shift in the Middle East. Getting rid of al Qaeda and JaM (supported by Iran) in Iraq does not end their threats on a global basis... but it takes a lot of wind from their sails and makes them vulnerable on that same, global scale. We are still left with all other forms of illegitimate warfare that are getting more vitriolic and deadly over time, however, and ignoring *those* will get us in the exact, same sort of situation we were in on 9/10.

We must learn that in this new era, we must honor victory, not celebrate it as a final end save to major conflicts. The support of civilization and Nation States is the good in this fight and those to come down the pipeline for the next few decades, at least. It, like piracy, will always be with mankind so long as we are human. If we forget that, we will get killed by it.