A couple of Win 10 Speed Ups

Zap as many installed apps as you can.  Games, stuff you have never used, Avast anti virus.  Windows won't let you un install anything it thinks essential.

In the search box on the taskbar type "programs"  Select Apps and Features.  Run down the list of installed applications and uninstall as many as you can.  I zapped 20 of so.  Sped things up perceptibly. 

Kill off CTF Loader.   Do Control Panel-> Systems & Security->administrative Tools->Services.  Find the Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Service.  Stop it.  Make sure it stays stopped.  It may pop back to life a couple of times.  Then set startup type to disabled.  That did kill CTF loader out of task manager. 

 

Woodsville NH 4th of July Parade

Woodsville, a small town north of Franconia Notch, has been running a decent 4th of July parade for as long as I can remember.  My brother was in the National Guard, which marched in the parade every summer, and so we took all the kids and watched the parade every summer.  Brother's unit was artillery, towed cannon, no tanks.  I am sure if it had been an armor unit, we would have had tanks instead of cannon.
  So. I am amused to hear whining on the TV over a couple of tanks moved into Washington DC for the 4th.  Whingers are complaining that tanks are too militaristic, too expensive, and downright un American. 
   Up here in God's country, we enjoy seeing the Guard, seeing every firetruck for miles around, and all the cop cars, the floats, and politicians like me with yard signs duct taped to the doors of our cars. And maybe a flyover.  It's the 4th.  Helova good day for a parade. 

New TV

Did some net searching for RCA jacks on Samsung TV's.  The word from the net is that new TV's don't have audio output RCA jacks at all.  Someone said the music industry objected to them claiming that they were being used to pirate music.  Someone said for TV's with optical digital sound output, (my Samsung has such a port) you can buy a converter box for $26, and an optical cable ($?) and convert the optical digital signal back to plain old baseband analog audio signal  that my stereo can handle.  I do want the stereo sound.  The TV speakers rattle and break up when I push the TV sound all the way up, and the TV isn't really loud enough, and I miss the sound playing in my workshop off a pair of fairly decent bookcase speakers mounted in the shop driven by the stereo amp.  
   VCR now works.  Dunno why it didn't work last night.  Loaded a tape, plugged it in and got pix and sound.  Stereo separation is weak, but then my test tape is Disney's Fantasia which was made long before stereo was invented.
   Now all I have to do is figure out what the password for my router is and I can take video right off the internet.  My Netgear router has a button on it, that when pressed  connects up to my computers, no hassle.  I'll see if that works on TV's. 
   One last trick.  When I hit "source" on the TV remote I get a choice of HDMI 1, HDMI 2 and AV.  I would like to relabel the choices as Cable Box, DVD, and VCR.  There oughta be a way but I haven't found it yet.  Manual is mostly worthless and Samsung's website just offers a downloadable copy of the same manual. 

The Sony flatsceen died yesterday, Bought a new one

I thought I needed a 32 inch TV, at least that is what the dead Sony was.  Came back from Wally Mart with a Samsung UN32M4500 for only $149.  The Sony cost $400 ten years ago.  I could have fit a new 40 inch into the living room, the entire TV is smaller.  The old Sony had a sizable bezel around the 32 inch screen.  The new Samsung has no bezel at all, and I could have fit the next bigger size into the .living room.
  New Samsung has nice video, two HDMI ports, one for the DVD player and one for the cable box.  Apparently Samsung doesn't offer audio outputs jack anymore so I cannot feed the TV sound into my stereo speakers.  It does come with  an internet connection.  The setup program asked for my router password.  I gave it the password from my address book, and that didn't work.  I will have to have a long conversation with the router about that.   Video is good, nice and bright.  VCR  sorta works, but the video is terrible, black and white, heavy checker board, no sound.  Might be the tape, but it probably isn't.  I'll try a known good tape later tonight. 
   It would be nice if  they would mold the plastic casework in something besides gloss black.  The black makes it hard to read serial numbers, model numbers, and connector designations, and to see screws and make fastenings.  

Democrat Presidential Debate

Strange affair.  I missed Wednesday night's warmup show, the TV cable was broken.  Thursday night I managed to get a roof antenna connected to the TV, AND I fixed the cable.  Then I feel asleep before the show started at 9PM.  So I didn't see the shows.  All I have to go on is the after action reports on TV, internet and Wall St Journal.  Since the MSM are all democrats, I figure the chilly reception given the event means it had some real problems.
   None of the two dozen candidates said anything memorable.  All of them came out in favor of medicare for all, free college, student loan forgiveness,  tax-the-rich, let everyone into the country.  Somehow, I don't think any of those ideas is a real vote getter.  In fact, I think they are a voter turnoff. 

NH Senate Session 27 June, Budget Day.

They presented the budget, parts 1 and 2, aka HB1 and HB2, from the last committee of conference.  We didn’t get a chance to amend anything.  Vote it up or down, that’s it.  We had 3 hours of oratory, praise from Democrats, objections to size and new taxes from Republicans.  Seldom did anyone mention a number, such as the number of dollars to be spent.   Democrats tacked a raise the smoking age bill onto the budget.  That is an old parliamentary trick; take something that would never be voted thru by the legislature.  Attach it to something that has to pass like the budget.  It will go thru because the pain of killing the budget far exceeds the pain of letting the rider go thru.  We did so, and the smoking age is now 21 in New Hampshire. 

   Everyone expects the governor will veto this budget on account of too much taxing and too much spending.  To guard against this we passed a continuing resolution that allows state operations to continue for three months or until we do pass a budget for real. 

   Then we went thru a bunch of last minute bills.  We knocked off a bunch with the fast track (consent) calendar.  And we did roll call votes, all 14-10, to pass the rest of  them.  Hopefully the governor will veto the worst of ‘em. 

Congress doesn't do health care anymore.

NHPR ran a long piece on health care yesterday.  They decried the cost and number of un insured.  It sounded terrible.  In this half hour (one hour?) piece they never discussed some things we could do to make things better. 

    First off, we could allow importation of drugs from any reasonable first world country, Canada say, and Britain and France and Germany and some others.  Somalia and Bangladesh need not apply.  Drugs overseas, often of American manufacture, are a lot cheaper than the same drugs in the US.  Why you ask?  Overseas health authorities bargain over price with Big Pharma, or in some cases have the authority to set prices.  Whereas here in freedom loving USA, Medicare and Medicaid are forbidden by law to bargain for a good price on drug purchases.   For that matter, we could rewrite those no-bargaining laws; all they do is increase Big Pharma’s profits. 

   Secondly we could allow health insurance companies to sell policies in all 50 states, no extra paperwork required.  Right now each state requires all insurance companies, in state or out of state, to submit endless paperwork to the state health authority.  The process is so bad that a lot of insurance companies just don’t bother with smaller states like New Hampshire.  This is why New Hampshire only has TWO health insurers.  Talk about opportunity for price gouging. 

   Both of these ideas require federal laws.  And Congress doesn’t pass federal laws any more, nowadays all Congress does is investigate (harass) Trump.   Which is amusing, but it does nothing to reduce health care costs.  Right now, the US spends TWICE as much on health care as any other country in the world and US health is no better than any other first world country.