Windows Services Fax Services to Protected Storage

BTW.  Sorry about the format.  This data was originally a spreadsheet.  Converting it to something acceptable to blogger was only partly successful.

Fax Service	The name says it all. Fax sending works in Man	Man.
File Replication	Keeps Files updated between multiple file servers	Nohave
File Server For Macintosh	The name says it all.	Nohave
FTP Publishing Service	Sends files to clients	Nohave
Gateway for Netware	Support for obsolete networking protocol	Nohave
Human Interface Dev. Access	USB keyboards/Mice/Etc	Nohave
Help And Support	Used for Help&Support center.  Not system critical and can be disabled.	Nohave
IIS Admin Service	Modify workings of Internet Info Service (IIS)	Nohave
IMAPI CD-burning COM Service	Drag&Drop CD burn	Nohave
Indexing Service	Supports fast file finding at expense of slow boot. Worthless Resource Hog. Use Add/Remove Programs to kill Indexing everywhere.	disabled
Internet Authentication Service	Pass word checker for remote clients	Nohave
Internet Connection Sharing	Small home network sharing of a single internet connection (dialup. DSL, cable modem)	Nohave
Intersite Messaging	Sends mail from server to server	Nohave
Ipsec Services	Special Internet Security not widely used. Not system critical and can be safely disabled.	Nohave
IPSec Policy Agent	Internet Security>	Man.
Kerboros Key Dist. Center	Enables user logon via kerborous	Nohave
License Logging Service	Logs Client access as Licensed or Pirate	Nohave
Logical Disc Manager	Reports new drive installation. Needed for USB storage devices. Otherwise can be disabled.	auto
Logical disc Manager Admin Services	?	Man.
Message queueing	? Needed for Com+ WMI, MSMG
Messenger Service	Spam gateway	disable
Net Logon	Processes net logons	disable
Net Meeting Remote Desktop  Share	Supports MS net meeting. Bad security hole	disable
Network Connections	Supports dialup and tcpip connections	auto
Network DDE	Dynamic Data Exchange	disable
Network DDE DSDM	Supports Network DDE	disable
Network Location Awareness	Provides services the computers that share your internet connection (ICS)  If not using ICS on a home network it may be disabled.	Nohave
Network Nets Transfer Protocol NNTP	Be a usenet news server	disable
NTLM Security Support Provider	Enables user logon via NTLM	disable
Online Presentation Broadcast	Real Time PowerPoint over the networkl	Nohave
Performance logs and alerts	Collects performace data from other computers	disable
Plug & Play	Loads hardware drivers. System critical. Do not disable.	auto
Universal plug7Play Host	Device host detect and Upnp support
Print Server for Macintosh	The name says it all.	Nohave
Print Spooler	background printing	auto
Process Control Service	?
Protected Storage	Secure storage for cryto keys? System critical do not diable.	auto

Tweaking Windows Services.

Services are little programs that Windows runs behind your back.  Some are necessary, many are not.  All of them steal valuable RAM and CPU time.  You can see just what Services are slowing your machine from the Start Menu.  Do Start ->Settings->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Services.  Services has an icon of meshed gearwheels.
    The services application gives you the name, a brief spiel, "started" and the startup type.  "Started" should be self explanatory.  Startup type "Auto" means load and start this service at boot time, slowing your boot and committing memory to the service even if you never use it.  Beware.  Service Remote Procedure Call (RPC) MUST be set to auto all the time.  Without RPC on auto Windows will fail to boot and the only recovery is to reinstall Windows from CD ROM.  Don't mess with RPC, it bites.
   Startup type "Manual" means Windows will load and start the service only when some program tries to use the service.  Load and start is so fast that putting services to manual doesn't slow anything down.  Setting things to manual makes the machine boot faster.
    Startup type "Disabled" means never load and run the service no matter what.  A number of services are security holes or spam gateways and should be disabled.

    I am posting the service settings that work on my machine (Blackbox), which runs Windows XP Media Center (XP with some add ons to make/fake it into being a digital video recorder).  It's a single machine home machine running by itself (no networking to other machines).   Since the number of services is vast, the service list is long and I'll post it in pieces.
   I was able to get my boot time down to 45 seconds and make Blackbox perceptibly livelier with these service settings.  I thought I'd pass them on.

Tweaking Windows Services Alerter to Fast User Switching

		Dstarr Blackbox
Alerter	Transmits alerts for display by Messenger Services. Spam gateway.	disable
App. Layer Gateway Service	Supports Internet Connection Sharing.  Obsolete.  We use routers now to put multiple computers on one Internet wire.	Man.
Application Management	Install applications off the LAN.  Corp IT might want this, but I don’t.	Man.
Ati Hot Key Poller	Net rumor says that is a hot key grabber from ATI who makes my video hardware. I never use hotkeys	Man.
ARSVC	Media Ctr always ready stuff. Arservice.exe. Keeps hardware alive even after you power it down.	Man.
automatic Updates	Visits MS website looking for Windows Patches	Man.
Background Intel. Xfer Service	Network files xfer in background for Winupdate	Man.
Boot Info. Negotiation Layer BINL	Install Windows over LAN	Nohave
Certificate Services	X.509 Certificates?	Nohave
ClipBook	Allows other computers to see the clipboard. I ought to make it “disabled”.	Man.
Cluster Service	?	Nohave
COM+ Event System	auto Distribution of Com Events	Man.
Com+ System Applications	Same as above	Man.
Computer Browser	Finds other computers to place into Network Neighhood.  Needed for 2 computer LAN?	Man.
Crypto Services	Cypto support to auto update, WinMediaPlay&PNP	Nohave
Dcom Server Process Launch	Required for RPC. Do not disable	Nohave
DHCP Client	Obtains dynamic IP address from ISP or router. Needed for all networking	auto
DHCP Server	Furnishes dynanic IP addresses to clients	Nohave
Distributed File System DFS	Network File shares	Nohave
Distributed Link Tracking Client	Keeps track of location of files shared over the network	Man.
Distributed Link Tracking Server	Provides information to clients to keep track of shared files/	Nohave
Distributed Transaction Coordinator	Supports Com+ Msg Queueing, SQL file sharing over the network	Man.
DNS Client	Needed to convert www.names into IP numbers	Man.
DNS Server	Converts Domain Names into IP addresses for clients	Nohave
Error Reporting Service	Report errors back to Microsoft in Redmond	Nohave
Event Log	Logs Windows errors to disk. System critical cannot be disabled	auto
Fast User Switch Compatability	Allows login as new user w/o reboot.  I wouldn’t use it even if I had it.	Nohave

What is it with Plastic Bags?

First Washington DC "banned" them.  Actually they used the greenie furor to hike prices.  Bags used to be free, now the DC markets charge 5 cents a bag.  PITA.  Now LA is talking about bannng them.
  So what do the greenies have against a simple plastic bag?  I go to the store, the store puts my groceries into plastic bags, I carry the bags to the car.  At home I save all the bags and use them to take my recycling to the "transfer station". (it's not PC to call it the town dump).  What's not to like?

Real Jobs and Government Jobs

Thing to bear in mind.  Real jobs produce real wealth.  Real jobs manufacture stuff, transport stuff, grow stuff, mine stuff, construct stuff.  At quitting time, the real worker goes home knowing that there is a little more wealth in the world than when he came on shift. 
   Government jobs do not create wealth.  Firemen, cops, school teachers, soldiers, and bureaucrats may be necessary, but they don't create wealth.  Their salaries are paid with money taken from the real workers by force of law. At quitting time the government worker goes home knowing that it's five o'clock.
    You hear Obama saying "The private economy is doing OK, it's the government employment that needs help."  and you gotta know the president is talking thru his hat.
    You hear "progressive" economists like Krugman and democratic  politicians decrying the reduction of the government work force as if  government workers were the key to prosperity.  They aren't.
   Prosperity comes from real workers at real jobs.  Euro style bankruptcy comes from  government jobs.

Beast of extreme dampness

Stupid Beast went out yesterday.  Then we had one of those sudden summer thunderstorms.  A real gullywasher cloudburst.  She failed to make it back to the house in time.  After the rain let up, she appeared at the door, wanting IN.  NOW.
   She has somewhere out doors to get out of the rain.  But either she wasn't fast enough to get there in time or it wasn't all that rainproof.  She was wringing wet, fur soaked, leaving wet paw prints on the rug.  I tried to dry her off with a bathtowel, but the towel spooked her (your basic fraidy cat) and she scuttled under a bed, still wet.  Didn't dry off for hours.

Counterfeit MIL SPEC semiconductors

Yet another Aviation Week article on the dangers of counterfeit chips finding their way into US systems such as THAADS anti missile, C-130J transport, Apache and Chinook helicopters.  The article goes on to scary speculation with counterfeit chips might have concealed backdoors allowing an enemy to disable US weapons systems in time of war thru a sneaky internet attack.
   This is largely a self inflicted wound.  The military wants to approve each semiconductor device that goes into a weapons system.  They take so long to approve a device that it is out of production by the time the Pentagon finishes doing the paperwork.  Since the makers can not obtain approved MIL SPEC devices from the OEM manufacturer, instead they deal with a world full of shady wholesalers/distributers,  who for a price, will offer any old MIL SPEC chip you might need.  And  the wholesalers/disti's will find the needed chips anywhere.
    The solution is to require defense contractors to use current production commercial chips from reputable US makers.   A box  of commercial grade chips shipped from the likes of Intel, Analog Devices, Texas Instrument, Micron, Xylinx or Altera will be what the maker says they are.  A shipment of chips from Midnight Semiconductor Supply might be damn near anything , from damn near anywhere. 
   Current production commercial chips are 10 to 100 times more reliable than any kind of  MIL SPEC device.  Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.  Built a brassboard system with commercial devices, it worked fine.  Built the deliverable system with MIL-SPEC devices which were terrible.  A couple of dead devices in every box.  Electrical performance so low that we had to redesign circuits that worked fine with decent commercial devices to work with the cruddy MIL-SPEC devices.
 

A looming threat

A dock from Japan washed up on an Oregon beach the other day.  It had been washed out to sea by the terrible earthquake and tidal wave that hit Japan last year. USA Today called it a looming threat.
   Wow.  Japan suffered an earthquake, a flood, tens of thousands of deaths, even more still homeless, power shortages, rolling blackouts and radiation leaks.   But one piece of flotsam washing up on a west coast beach is a looming threat. 
   Is not something out of proportion here?

Chartres can't borrow money

Yes that Chartres, the one with the famous cathedral in France.  It's the custom of European municipalities to finance public works projects with bank loans, rather then by selling bonds, as is customary in the US.  Chartres (and a lot of other municipalities) are having trouble finding a bank that will make them a loan.  Chartres sent people as far away as China looking for loans. The point of the Wall St Journal piece is that the Euro financial hangup is slowing the European economy.  Perhaps.
   Of course you have to wonder about some of these projects.  Chartres managed to build a really nice water park and a 10 screen movie theater a few years ago with a 500 million Euro loan.  Is it appropriate for government to build recreational facilities? As opposed to letting private enterprise handle it?  Up here in darkest New Hampshire we have some really nice water parks and movie theaters and they are private operations, privately owned, privately operated, and privately financed.

Yet More Presidential Leadership

And Obama wants to hike the minimum wage.  What a great idea.  Would you rather have $10 a hour or unemployment?
   Minimum wage workers are the entry level, the summer worker, the less than diligent, the not very employable.  They are hanging onto their jobs because the little they produce brings in a little more money to the business than their pay and benefits cost the business.  
   Raise the pay and suddenly these workers cost more than they bring in.  And they get laid off. 

Don't get cocky Dept

Going into the Wisconsin recall election, all the polls predicted "Too close to call".   Instead, Scott Walker, the Republicans and the Tea Party scored a 6 to 7% victory,  somewhere between really decent and land slide. 
Right now the national polls call the Obama-Romney race "Too close to call".  Suppose those polls work out like the Wisconsin polls? In that case Romney gets a solid win. 
  Save this warm thought.  But don't count on it.  This is the year to work really really hard on beating Obama.  Any slacking off and he might win.

Innumeracy on NPR

The clock radio came on at the usual time this morning with news that Scott Walker had won in Wisconsin.  That's a good thing, I have been hoping that would happen.
But.  I listened to the same news item repeated three times.  They never did gave the vote totals.   That would require dealing with numbers, something that strikes terror into the hearts of journalism majors.  Part of the story is how much did the winner win by.  Was it a skin of the teeth squeaker, a decent margin, or a landslide?
   This was an important election, said by many to foreshadow outcome of the November presidential election.  Was it just a fear of numbers or was it a bunch of democratic NPR newsies so unhappy about a Republican victory that they decided to conceal an important part of the story?
   Follow up.  I never did heard the vote count on the radio, but the Manchester Union-Leader gave the margin of victory as 6%, which is a solid win.  Not a landslide, but decent.

Is it a typo or a ripoff?

Flemington NJ.  Nice place, I've driven thru it quite a few times on my way to Pennsylvania.  At Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington they are working on reducing hospital caused infections.  They are into housekeeping, scrub everything down to kill off lurking bacteria.  They have a fancy new scanner that can detect  bacteria on doorknobs, bed railings, tray tables, water faucets etc.  They are issuing stronger cleaners and disinfectants, trying to kill nasty bugs like Clostridium difficile and MSRA. 
  Not a bad plan.  Better to kill 'em off with Clorox on the mop than with antibiotics inside patients.
  Then we get to the "hard-to-clean" stuff like computer keyboards.  According to the Wall St. Journal article, Hunterdon is paying $15,000 EACH for washable computer keyboard.
   Wow.  $15,000 for a KEYBOARD!
   Google tells me I can get a washable computer keyboard for $19.99. 
   Either the WSJ has a typo or Hunterdon is getting ripped off big time.

Presidential Leadership

The newsies all agree that we need more of it.  Today we got some.  With the economy well and truly trashed, Europe about to collapse, China entering a recession, the Middle East in chaos, the US deficit out of control, we are getting some presidential leadership.  Obama is leading the charge to pass the "Paycheck Fairness Act", a law requiring equal pay for equal work for women.
    It's a worthy cause I suppose.  But is this what the country needs this year?   Let's hear it for leadership.

What would you say?

High school dropouts.  You have a kid, 16 or 17, wants to drop out of high school.  He has a decent job lined up, construction, or building trades, or factory work or driving a truck. Something with a better future than McDonalds.   He isn't much of an academic, doesn't get into book learning much. 
   Do you say OK?  Or do you insist that he/she sit thru another year or two in class to get a high school diploma? 

Keeping score as you tweak Windows for speed

Windows has many faults.  It's a virus magnet, it's too plump, its flaky and it's slow.  We poor Redmond victims can't do much about the first three items, but we can do something about the the last one.  You can make Windows somewhat less sluggish.  It can be hard to tell if your tweaks are helping or hurting.  You can keep score with  Windows Task Manager. 
    Task Manager is easy to start.  Just hit control-alt-delete and Task Manager will open his window.  He has five tabs, Applications, Processes,Performance and Networking. 
   Applications shows what "real" programs you have running.  A "real" program is one you started with a mouse click, which displays a screen window and has code taking up RAM and CPU run time.  About all the Application window is good for is shutting down applications (End Task in Winspeak)  that have frozen up and no longer respond to mouse or keyboard.
   Processes is a more interesting tab for the tweaker.  Process is Winspeak for any program that takes up RAM and needs CPU time.  All sorts of things take up RAM and CPU time but don't show a screen window.  My Blackbox has 26 processes burdening the hardware.  When he was new from the store he had nearly 50.  The only good process is a dead process.  Any tweaks you can do to shut off unneeded processes will make your machine run faster.  Most processes are actually part of Windows and you can't do anything about them. All the Applications running in the Application Window will also show in the process window.  The code part counts as a (sometimes more than one) process.  Along with the process name, you want to see how much memory each process is using, how much CPU time it uses and how many I/O writes (disk writes) it is doing. 
If these numbers don't show in the process window, click on "View" on the taskbar and then "Select  Columns".  Put a check mark on the properties (there are dozens of properties) that you want to see.   The organized Windows tweaker will keep notes.  Note down the number of processes, and keep track of it. Fewer is better.
  Process window will show any virus you may be blessed with.  As of this writing, anything running will always show up in the process window.  The trick is to identify the virus amid the blizzard of  ordinary processes.  Especially as many virus take the name of perfectly legitimate parts of Windows. 
   The Performance tab  gives score on memory usage.  Physical Memory  Total, is all the real RAM on your system.  Available is what you think it is.  System Cache is used as a disc cache.  Windows keeps recently accessed disk data in the cache on the idea that it might be needed again soon.  It saves a time consuming disk access each the cache hits.  When RAM runs low, windows can reduce the size of cache to make more memory available.  Kernel Memory Total is RAM taken for Windows use and cannot be used by programs.  Any tweak that reduces Kernel Memory Total makes more RAM available to your programs. 
 

"The Supreme Court has the last word"

Heard just this morning on NHPR.  Speaker was talking about NH and the NH Supreme Court rather than the Federal brand of same.  Must be another well educated journalism school grad.   In the real world, the legislature can always override the court, they can always amend the constitution.  Or just ignore the court ruling.

Wall St Journal Worry Warts

Medium length OP-ed piece in the Journal about electric cars.  Ron Adner, from Dartmouth's Tuck school of business opines that electric cars will have poor resale value due to deterioration of the expensive battery over time.  And  that resale value is a crucially important factor in the decision to buy a new car.  And, plugging in zillions of electric cars to recharge will over load the national electric grid and put the lights out all over North America.  Being a professor at the school of business, Mr. Adner suggests a change in business model.  Instead of selling electric cars, he suggests leasing them like cell phones.  That will solve everything.  When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail...
   In the real world these are non problems.  Sure the batteries wear out over time, but so does every other part of a car.  The depreciation on new cars is already so awful that short lived battery packs won't make things much worse. A new car looses half its value the moment you drive it off the dealer's lot.  The NADA blue books show cars depreciate to rock bottom after seven years.  The design goal for battery life on the Chevy Volt was 10 years.  Nobody knows if they achieved that goal, the cars haven't been around for 10 years yet.  So electric car resale value will be much less than what they cost new.  What's new here?
   Then there is the load on the electric grid.  Non-problem.  Demand for electricity drops way down at night when every one goes to bed and turns off the lights and the TV.  Have a timer start the charging after 11 PM.  Mr. ElectricCarOwner gets home at 6 PM and plugs in his car.  It doesn't draw juice until the timer cuts it in after the evening power peak is over.   Electric companies can offer bargain rates to encourage off  peak car charging.
    I'm glad none of my children went to Dartmouth, since they have turkey's like this teaching there.

Trendy Marketeers

"What's Selling Where | Paint colors.  Title of a piece in the Wall St. Journal. They list five trendy sounding colors, complete with color illustrations of each color.  Plus lots of fancy words about the grooviness of each color.
   Trouble is, these forward looking trendy colors are the same dreary light pastels that have been slapped on the walls of Army barracks, gov'mint offices, and tired industrial buildings, for the last 50 years.  Nothing new here, just washed out light blues, greens, and tans. 
  Hint to homeowners.  If you are gonna paint a room, there is a lot to be said for good old landlord white (very light ivory).  It brightens up any room, makes it look larger, and won't clash with wall hangings, rugs, curtains, furniture, or pictures.  If you want to use a strong color on the walls, have your decorating plan well in mind, everything put into the room must either match, or at least harmonize with, the wall color.  Done right, it can be effective, but it's hard to do right, especially on a tight budget.  
 Second hint to homeowners.  Think about wall paper.  It goes up easily, it hides all sorts of really horrible flaws in the walls, and can transform a room.  Wall paper is less demanding than strong monocolors as to matching and harmonizing with the rest of the stuff  you put in the room.

Free Anti virus programs

These are the ones I have used.  All of them are scanners, upon command, or perhaps automatically, they compare files on your disc with a list of known badware/malware, and post big "Gotcha" messages when they find a match.  They all take an hour or so to do your hard drive, and they all wait for you to personally OK zapping a malware file.  Just in case they make a mistake.  Which they never do.  Since new malware is hatched every day, they all have provisions to download updated badware lists.
   Most of them also install "realtime scanners" , programs that load into RAM at boot time and check all incoming stuff (email, email attachments, downloads) for badware,  These scanners slow your system down a lot.  I just removed a couple from my desktop, and the improvement in response is very noticeable and very pleasant.  MicroSoft Security Essentials is the worse offender here.  It slowed Blackbox down so much he was falling behind my typing.  When a 600 Mhz machine with a Gigabyte of RAM cannot keep up with my 10 keystrokes/sec hand typing, something ain't right. Blowing away Microsoft Security essentials fixed things right up.
   I have run all of these antivirus programs within the last few months.  The computers all survived the experience.  They are all free.  They are all fairly easy to run, you download them from the web, run 'em,  and tell 'em to zap everything they find.  None of 'em will find everything.  If faced with a difficult infection, try several of them.  What one misses, another might find.   

MalwareBytes.  A relative newcomer.  As a plus feature, no "realtime scanner".  He just scans the hard drive, once, and doesn't bother you afterwards.  Website BleepingComputer tipped me off to this one.

Spybot Search and Destroy  Been around for a while.  Started out as an anti spybot scanner and broadened out into scanning for most types of malware.  No "realtime scanner", a plus feature in my estimation.

Lavasoft AdAware  Another spybot scanner that has branched out.  Installs its own "realtime scanner" and whines when it finds traces of other antivirus programs on your machine. 

AVG   Another relative newcomer.  Still shaking the code down, but it works and does no harm.
 
ZoneAlarm.  Started off as a firewall and the latest version includes a disk scanner and a "realtime scanner".

MicroSoft Security Essentials   Fairly new from Redmond.  Effective, is able to block some pesky infections spread from websites.  CPU hog.  Slows your machine a LOT, all the time. Consumes up to 90% of your CPU time.  Difficult to turn off or remove.

One damn thing after another

We had a serious thunderstorm Monday night.  Next morning main computer, trusty old Blackbox, a Compaq, was no longer on the internet. Windows claimed the network cable was unplugged.  It wasn't, but the little green LED that indicates connection was out.  After some blundering around, I fired up trusty laptop, and lo and behold, he went right on line by wireless.  So, that means cable modem is alive, and the router has enough life to do wireless.  I'm using one to those wireless routers that puts out a wireless signal AND drives four RJ-45 jacks.  Blackbox is connected to one of the RJ-45 jacks.  Maybe the Ethernet cable failed, or  Blackbox's network adapter got fried.  Or the router got half fried, so the wireless still works but the RJ-45 jacks are toast.
   So I pull out a PCI wireless adapter card and plug it in. But the install CD refuses to run. So I decide to blow away some of the antivirus software that has been bogging Blackbox down.  After a bitter hand-to-hand struggle I get rid of Microsoft Security Essentials and ZoneAlarm.  Neither went easily or quietly.  But after killing them both, the install CD started to work, and the wireless card connected and Blackbox is back on line.
   Joy.  And, I knew that the antivirus stuff was slowing him down, but wow, now he is back in his old form, quick and silent.  Love it.  So I am gonna run barefoot for a while.

Game of Thrones

Netflix delivered the first disc last night.  Episodes 1 and 2 from season one.  Highly enjoyable.  It's a medieval swords and sorcery fantasy.  George R.R. Martin wrote five books set in this universe (I have read them all so that makes me a fan).  We have Sean Bean as Lord Eddart Stark.  Sean has been gaining weight over the years.  As Richard Sharpe, battling Napoleon he was lean and elegant especially in that well tailored rifleman's green uniform. Later as Boromir in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, he was a grown man, on the strong and muscular side.  Now as Ned Stark he looks overweight.  Both roles are set in similar fantasy worlds.  Clearly Martin was influenced by Tolkien.  Martin's world has a stronger flavor of the high middle ages than Tolkien, who is more into elves and Fairie.
   "Production values"  (sets, costumes, special effects and such) are really good especially for a TV mini series. Everything looks right,  no anachronisms.  The camera man knows enough to put the camera on a tripod.  No arty "shake the camera" shots which I find annoying.  The sound man does it right and the dialogue is understandable.  The young Starks (Ayra, Brendan, Sansa) are appealing.  The girls are really good looking and sometimes scantily clad.
   If you haven't read the books you will need to pay close attention to understand what is happening.  Some of the key scenes are glossed over pretty rapidly and  if I hadn't read the book I would not have understood what is going on.
   Anyhow I enjoyed the first two episodes, and Netflix ought to deliver more of them soon.

Business

For today, I made a dump run, and then mowed the rest of the grass.  Then I took a nap.  Seemed like a full and productive day to me. 

Car ads

One the those fliers jammed into our mailbox from a Littleton car dealer.  The cover plumps for a Jeep SUV, no price.  Open 'er up, and we have a Dodge Challenger, 6.4 Liter Hemi (403 c.i.) manual transmission and 20 inch wheels for only $44,900.  Nice car, Cadillac price.  Is that manual transmission four on the floor or three on the tree?  Same page we have a big Dodge crew cab pickup with Cummins diesel for $50,999.  Fancy pickup costs more than luxury sedan. Inside we have real Jeep Jeeps for $20K and a Chrysler 200, V6 and a slush box for $17K.
   Then we have Dodge Caravans for $17K and Chrysler Town & Countries (same thing) for $26K.
  Damn, new cars cost a bundle. 

Tools, new tools

The grass was on the warpath, stalks up to a foot high.  Ancient hand mower just wasn't cutting it.  Mowing had become a chore to be dreaded.  I thought about just turning the whole job over to Ken King, my friendly local lawn care guy.  But I have been cutting this little lawn,with a hand mower, for forty years.  Going with lawncare is like admitting I'm getting too old to mow.
   So,  I set off to buy a new mower.  Checked Sears, Home Depot and Lowe's.  Come home with  a brand new Husqvarna hand mower.  $149.  It fit in the trunk of the Mercury, lid closed.  Got it home, read the instruction booklet, (solid boiler plate to repel liability lawyers) put it together and tried it out.
   Outstanding.  Cuts it level, gets every stalk.  It's feather light (lotta plastic).  Before I knew it, the side lawn was all cut.  Pressed on to the front lawn.  That cut like lightning too.  They did something good with the gearing so the reel spins faster than the old style mowers. They replaced the roller with real back wheels so the grass stays upright to be cut, rather than lying down flat and escaping its proper fate.  Puts the honest self satisfaction of seeing a flat level mowed path slicing thru the shagginess back into the chore.
   I could have gotten a power mower for only $30 more.  The guy at Lowes assured me that it would start next spring if I put some miracle additive into the gas tank.  But this baby is so light and pushes so easily and it makes me feel so environmentally sensitive, that its more satisfactory than a power job.

Memorial Day Parade, Littleton, NH

Parade down Littleton NH Main St.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Littleton NH does a small town Memorial Day Parade.  This is a high school marching band.  I saw one young girl marching by in flip flops.   I hope her feet are good and tough.  Used to be the marching units would toss candy to small children.  The nanny state got loose this year and forbade candy as a safety hazard.  Our tax dollars at work.

Decent turnout, all things considered.  We had our US Rep (Charlie Bass) our selectmen, some of our state reps, a state senate candidate (Debi Warner) and a lot of veterans.

ROTC Color guard

Ninth Grader sings National Anthem

John Starr (my brother) delivers memorial address

My brother was the featured speaker.  He is a combat veteran of both Viet Nam and Iraq.  He retired from the guard after his tour in Iraq.  John has done a bit more for the country than I, I just served in Viet  Nam.

The Economist's plan to save the Euro

The Economist, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is a weekly news magazine based in London.  It has good world wide coverage, tells it fairly straight, and thinks it knows all the answers. This week they opine upon a fix for the Euro crisis. Here is their solution.
1.  Create an EU bank regulator that would operate an EU wide version of deposit insurance (like the American FDIC), along with setting regulation about bank capital, winding up the affairs of failed banks, and have the money to "recapitalize" (otherwise known as "bailout")  shaky or broke banks.  Give this new agency control of the existing European bank rescue funds.  Hopefully the EU regulator would shield banks from national government pressure to lend to national government favored industries or buy national government bonds. 
2.  Create "Eurobonds" backed by all the Euro countries.  Unsaid, but understood by bond buyers is that Germany pledges to make Eurobonds good.  Use the proceeds from Eurobond sales to make loans to countries that no one else will loan money to, like Spain and Italy.
"All that is required is for over indebted countries to have access to money and for banks to have a 'safe' euro-wide class of assets that is not tied to the fortunes of one country."

As the Economist sees it, German backed Eurobonds would be as good as American T-bills.  Dead broke governments would not have to clean up their acts so soon.  Out of the goodness of their hearts the Germans extend their excellent credit rating to the rest of Europe.  Angela Merkel is the only person standing in the way of this financial nirvana.  Shame on her.

I got another plan.  Let the stupid banks go bust.  Let the dead broke counties reduce their spending now, rather than after they run out of other people's money.

Blogger's new features

The programming staff at blogger has time on their hands and they recoded the user interface,  the interface seen by us blog owners, not the interface seen by you readers.  Now after posting we see a list of all our recent posts with a count of  the comments and views of each post.  Fun, I can see which posts get the most views,  which I hope means the posts most popular with readers.   Going by this I oughta do more posts on movies, at least I have a higher view count on movie posts than on my political rants. 
   Of course I am wondering how this view count thing works.  How does the software know which post gets credit for a view when more than one post is in view at the same time?  Which is the usual case, few of my posts fill an entire page on Firefox. 

Space-X

Congratulations to the whole Space-X team.  Getting the Falcon to lift off and the Dragon to dock is a huge victory over Murphy's law.  There are a zillion things, some tiny, some large that can break, and it only takes one breakage to scrub the mission, or worse.  The Space-X team  did the required quality control checks, designed out the weak points, worked hard, and succeeded.
    It should be remembered that Elon Musk made a fortune in Silicon Valley, and then plowed a good deal of that fortune into Space-X.  Clearly better use of the money than Uncle Sam would have made of it had Uncle taken it in taxes.  Let's hear it for private enterprise.

Pop goes the tendon

Must be getting old.  I was in the kitchen and I just flipped a bit of crud off my fingers into the sink.  They was a faint pop sound and all of a sudden the index finger was off at a funny angle.  It didn't get better so next day I went to see my doctor.  Got there about nine o'clock. Did some Xrays, nothing's broken, got set up to see a hand surgeon in Concord (hour and a half drive).  Surgeon looked at it.  The tendon that runs over the knuckle tore out of its groove.  Only fix is splint the finger and wait FOUR WEEKS for it to heal.  With the splint in place.  Arrgh.
  So now I am learning to do one handed, all kinds of things that I always used two hands to do.   Including typing. 
   Note to self.  Don't wave hands rapidly.  Something might break off.

Words of the Weasel, Part 30

"Growth".  As used by European politicians.
Plain English meaning.
"Germans give us money."

Perhaps Europe can't pull the US economy down

Interesting charts in today's Wall St. Journal.  It shows US exports to Europe to be only 1.2% of US GNP.   That means the entire continent could disappear from the face of the earth and we would only loose 1.2% of GNP in export sales.  To be real, Europe won't disappear completely, worst that can happen is it drops into recession and it's US imports drop off somewhat.
   Somewhat larger, Eurozone banks make loans to the US equal to 10.5% of  US GNP.  If things get bad enough in Europe, and enough Eurozone banks fail, that lending can dry up.  But so what?  We have plenty of banks over here, and we can print as much money as well like to fund loans.
   In short, a Euro meltdown won't hurt us nearly as much as it hurts the Europeans.  Of course plenty of US politicians are already pointing fingers at Europe to explain miserable US growth rates.  How can you tell when a politician is lying to you?   When you see his lips moving.

Words of the Weasel Part 29

Heard this morning on good old NPR.
"The discussions are on going". 

Plain English meaning.   "Nothing has happened" 

What Price pills?

Anything you want apparently.  My doctor has prescribed me seven pills to keep body and soul together.  I had been getting them for free thru Medicare Advantage.  Then all of a sudden, my Visa got zapped for $180 on the last refill.  Ouch.
  So it being time for new prescriptions anyhow, I took the new ones down to Walmart.   After a half an hour (spent browsing Walmart) they gave me a grocery bag full of pills and paperwork, for a mere $81.  For three months worth.  Not so bad. 
    So before I put all the new pills in the medicine cabinet I read some of the paperwork.  Each bottle of pills comes with four pages of paperwork, run off on the pharmacy's laserprinter.  Aside from the name of the pill and a number, the paperwork is all the same.  Boilerplate.  I should be happy that despite this government required cost enhancement Walmart is still cheaper than Medicare Advantage. 

So how bad is it in Europe? Really?

Hard to tell.  Germany, the biggest part of Europe is reported to be doing well.  A few small fry like Iceland and Ireland have already suffered financial collapse and bailout.  They are poorer now, but doing OK.  Greece is getting a bailout, but they are bitching about the conditions the bailer outers (Germans mostly) have demanded.  If the Greeks manage to irritate the bailer outers enough, the bailout will stop.  Then the Greeks will run out of money and have to print their own to keep going.  It will be tough on them, but heh, you want to speak politely to those who are giving you money.  Either way,  Greece is a sideshow. 
   Italy and Spain, both much bigger than Greece, are having the same problems.  To many government "workers" and pensioners demanding monthly checks and not enough tax revenue coming in.  Private investors have indicated that they won't lend either country much (if any) more dough.  They have to cut spending (lay off government "workers" and cut pensions) and get their economy growing again. That means scrapping no-layoff regulations, and dropping license requirements that keep the unemployed from taking jobs.  Spain and Italy are too big for anyone to bail out.  Nobody has that big a bucket.  If this doesn't work, they will have to print money or IOU's (which probably amounts to dropping out of the Euro) to make ends meet.
  The financial press and blogs are beginning to cry terror about Europe.  Undoubtedly some banks have been stupid and will get hosed when the defaults begin.  Too bad.  The world would be better off with fewer stupid banks. But the majority of European countries are doing OK (not great but reasonably OK), and having a few losers get flushed won't be the end of the world.
 

Crusading for Gaia

NPR is deeply into it.  Just listened to the second segment of a rant against a copper mine going into Mongolia.  To hear NPR tell it, this mine is ruining the Gobi desert, polluting the water, corrupting the noble Mongolian nomads.  A third segment is promised for tomorrow. 
  So far, NPR has quoted a few locals bitching and one local who claims the water level in his well has dropped a whole eight inches this year.  And the mine is spoiling the ambiance of the Gobi desert. 
  No mention of how many people are employed at the mine.  No mention that the living standard in Mongolia hasn't improved since Genghis Khan's time. 

No Kidding

"US regional airlines that can weather industry shakeout may thrive."   Title of article in Aviation Week.  Surely those that don't weather the industry shakeout won't thrive, they will be dead.  

Longest and strongest or C

The old advice for taking multiple guess tests, like SAT.  The answer with the most qualifications (longest and strongest) is more likely to be right.  "C" comes from the observation that the test makers don't like to place the right answer first (A) or last (D). 
   Heard a piece on NPR this morning.  Someone digitized the last twenty years of the Congressional Record.  They didn't say just how this super tedious chore was accomplished.  Text scanning I hope.  Keyboarding that much pure political drivel  rates as cruel and unusual  punishment in my book. 
  Anyhow, the researcher ran all the congresscritter's speeches thru a school grading program that rated the maturity of the writing on a grade scale (12th grade, 11th grade, and so on).   Back in the good old days, the average speech used vocabulary and sentence structure on the 11th grade level.  In the decadent present day, the average has sunk to the 10th grade level.  Woe to the Republic.
   It was revealed that the grading program looked at sentence length and use of fancy vocabulary, with longer and stronger rating higher.  Funny, they taught me that good writing uses short declarative active voice sentences, and short strong Anglo Saxon root words, rather than the longer and weaker Latin root words.
   Perhaps the Congresscritters are actually getting better at speechmaking?
   Woe to the students whose teachers use that grading program.
 

Speculators and the Volcker Rule

No English language definitions of speculation or the Volcker Rule exist. 
Buying and selling things when the writer dislikes the deal is speculation.  Buying and selling things when the writer likes the deal is prudent investing.  Like and dislike is personal and subjective.  Deals that loose money are likely to be dubbed speculative.  Deals in foreign currency, derivatives, sub prime mortgages and short sales are more likely to be called speculative than deal in stocks and bonds. 
   The Volcker Rule forbids some bank trading in the stock market and other places.  It permits some bank trading.  The differences between forbidden and permitted trading have never been spelled out in words. Some say that the Volcker Rule prohibits speculation. 
  

Advice for Parents paying for college

Or, students paying for college for that matter. 
Advice 1:   Don't enter college right after high school.  Instead get out in the real world, get a job (easier said than done today) or join the service, hike the Appalachian trail, hitchhike across the country, anything but sit in classrooms.  After 12 years of solid school,  most student's motivation is exhausted.  With little real world experience to anchor them, college freshmen are suckers for all the weird ideology pushed by college profs.  College will be a much more meaningful experience, and your grades will be much better after a year or two out of school and out in the real world. 
Advice 2:  Pick a real major, one that is of some economic use and that requires you to actual learn stuff.  Engineering, computer science, physics, biology, chemistry, math, business administration.  Avoid gender studies, race studies, sociology, political science, theater, these are of no value to anyone after graduation.
Be aware that majors in Astronomy, English, history, art, and music lead only to careers in teaching.  OK if that's what you want to do.  If you like students, and are willing to put up with the sheer boredom of education classes,  teaching can be rewarding for many.  But  for many more, teaching can loose its allure after a few semesters.  Think over carefully.   Same goes for an education major.  Super boring, but mandatory to get a job in the public schools.  Totally worthless outside the public school system. 
Beware that geology, although a real science, is a favorite with football players because it doesn't use any mathematics.  There are some jobs with the oil companies, but the field is not large.  Think over carefully. 

Spending Cuts first, tax hikes later

Congressman Ryan of budget fame was on Meet the Press this morning.  David Gregory and some democratic senator were all over him for dreadful budget cuts, "austerity" and the need for a "balanced" (i.e. tax hike) approach.  Ryan replied that his budget still spent 3% more than last year, as opposed to Obama's budget which would spend 4.5% more than last year.
    Ryan will spend 3% more?  With the economy growing at less than 3%?  Arrgh. 
    Remember that real cuts only occur when we spend LESS than last year.  If we spend more than last year, they are fake cuts.  Ryan is proposing fake cuts and the dems are still trashing him.
    Once we grant a benefit to some one, its nearly impossible to take it away.  So just to prove we can do it, we need to do some cuts.  Only after we cut the Federal budget back to 17% of GNP will I consider raising taxes to balance the budget.  If we cannot do the cuts in Congress, let's allow pure lack of dough to do them for us.  And pure lack of dough is coming. 
   Any tax hike just delays the necessary cuts. 

Pluckery

Of dandelions that is.  Growing season is upon us, the grass is in high gear and the weeds are trying to keep up.  The rain stopped and a couple of dozen golden dandelion blossoms bloomed, attempting to attract pollinating insects.  Inside they attracted the homeowner, who plucked the whole plant up by its roots.  About ten minutes of walking and plucking, and the lawn was pure green.  Got 'em all before they went to seed.
No agent orange, no pricey chemical lawn care.

Greeks Mouth Off.

Alexis Tsipras, head of the Greek hard left coalition Syriza, and who may well become prime minister if his coalition does well in the next Greek election, said he sees little chance that Europe will cut off giving money to Greece, but if they do, Athens will stop making payments on its loans. And a financial collapse in Greece will drag down the rest of the Euro zone. 
   Is Alexis that stupid 'cause he's  Greek, or 'cause he's a lefty?
   The Europeans can stop giving free money to Greece anytime.  When the Greeks stop making payments to European lenders, the Europeans can just give the money they were gonna give the Greeks direct to the lenders.  If  the lenders, European investors and banks,  cry hard enough, the Germans will bail them out, just this once.  The Greeks already gave the lenders a 75% haircut last month, what's a second pass with the clippers mean after that?
   As soon as the Europeans stop paying, the Greeks are in real trouble.  They don't have enough tax revenue to pay all the pensioners and government workers and suppliers.  They will have to print IOU's, or drachma's to keep things going.  Any Greek with two braincells firing, ought to be dropping by his bank and drawing all his money out, in Euro's, while he still can.  Because pretty soon the government will tell the banks, you are going to drachmas.  Don't pay out any more Euros to anyone, give 'em these nice fresh crisp hot-off-the-press drachma's instead.  That's what we call a run on the banks, and the Greeks are only two inches away from having one. 
   Greece is a narrow gauge side show.  The rest of Europe can manage just fine without them.  A Greek default on their debts would be an annoyance but not a body blow. The Greeks would do well to understand that.  There is no provision in the Euro constitution, or common Christian charity that compels giving money to deadbeats.

Who's afraid of the big bad algorithm?

Not me.  But some newsie on NPR is afraid one is gonna conquer the world.  She was talking about Netflix and their movie recommendations, all made by computer.  Not that I think Netflix's recommendations are extra ordinary, but occasionally they do steer me onto a good flick.  The newsie feared that  improvements in the the "algorithm" would yield a killer app that could read minds, violate civil liberties, and put Skynet in charge of the world.
  Not to worry.  First of all, the algorithm Netflix uses is trivial.  Algorithm means procedure.  As an example, consider a popular algorithm to find square roots.  It goes like this, guess what the root might be.  Square your guess and compare it with the original number.  If the squared guess is too big, try a smaller guess, conversely if the squared guess is too small, try a bigger guess.  Repeat until the squared guess is close enough to the original number.  Code this algorithm in your favorite computer language, and you have a program to find square roots.
   What Netflix does is ask us viewers which movies we like.  Then it looks to find other movies that are like the ones we like.  To do this you need a list of  all the movies in Netflix, and  to go with each movie , we need some properties.  Such as type (western, war movie, musical, costume drama, animated, etc) cast (actor and actress who play in the movie), director, rating (G, PG, R ...), year released, color or black & white, and so on.  All the computer does is look for movies that match the properties of the movies the customer likes.  This is a database of movies.  The Netflix "algorithm" is merely find movies with properties as close as possible to the properties of the customer's liked movies.  For a computer guy, that's a straightforward bit of coding. 
  What makes it work well is the database.  Especially if we can define some more properties. Amount of violence, and sexiness come immediately to mind, but there must be more.  The more well chosen and well defined properties in the data base, the better the match. 
    But it's the database that makes Netflix work, the algorithm is trivial. 

Crossfire Trail with Tom Selleck

If you liked Quigley Down Under, this is more of the same.  It's a western with all the trimmings.  A ranch, a man from out of town with a gun, a nasty well dressed villain, some cattle driving, a pretty widow,  a tiny frontier town way out in the middle of nowhere, a bad guy with a black hat, sixguns, and a fancy rifle in a big leather case, some romance, and of course a big showdown with lots of shooting.  Good fun to watch, few socially redeeming features.  Tom Selleck wears the same big black 'stache and white floppy hat he wore in Quigley Down Under.  He also uses the same understated dialog that is always good for a few chuckles.  Wilford  Brimley  puts on a great old codger role.  The movie is based upon a book by Louis Lamour.
    The movie opens with Tom Selleck promising to look after a dying buddy's ranch and widow.  When he finally gets out to the ranch he finds it deserted and overgrown in weeds, and the widow is living in town.  Everybody in town thinks the buddy died at a different time and place than Selleck knows is the truth.  Things develop from there in directions that any fan of westerns can probably guess.  It's all well done, well filmed (no shake the camera shots) , good sound (all the dialog is understandable), and fun to watch.  Brought to me by Netflix and USPS.
    About the only quibble I have, is the nasty well dressed villain has a bit too much hand rubbed walnut paneling in his office and too much fine furniture including a grand piano in his house for the  fresh built in the wilderness kind of town he is doing bad in.  This tiny burg doesn't even have a railroad yet and the thought of lugging all that stuff that far into the boondocks on horse back kinda breaks into my "willing suspension of disbelief".
   All in all a worthy western.