Month: March 2015

If I had a bunch of those sticky notes, they would be covering the computer screen this morning because there are so many little details to cover related to computers. Many sent in by readers and a few are things that just popped up in the news scans overnight.

Speaking of notes:  I assume you know Win-7 and beyond has Stick Notes built in?  Go to programs (or the search line in Win 8/8.1) and type Sticky Notes and run it.  Then, pin to your task bar.  When you need to make a note, one click on the task bar.  One click and they go back into hiding.  It’s a lot easier than using the task planner in Outlook or Project, but then we’re supposedly retired….still, computers matter.

Today is another one of those soft landmarks in computing because with shipping of the new MacBook, the world’s first implementations of USB 3.1 (*USB-C) will be on store shelves sooner than later.

ComputerWorld has a rundown on the six main features of it, but the dumbed-down version is that USB, which was never designed as a power plug – at least in earlier versions – will now support a 100-watt load.  And it will also supper 10-gigabit speeds, so this will, no doubt over time, replace the Thunderbolt and Firewire and maybe Lightning.

If you’re not an Apple fan, the same tech is launching in the new Google Chromebook Pixel, although what anyone would update a PC just to get a USN port that is faster is beyond me.  Current 3.0 technology can press up 1 gb transfers and, seriously, what is so damn important that those kind of speeds matter.

I don’t know how many boardroom-level meetings you have been to, but it’s sometimes just nuts the way people get into (language alert) dick-measuring over whose computer is faster.  It’s true absurd.  Like load times matter if the PowerPoint is playing smoothly?  Sure 24-cores or a portable Cray about be nice too, but part of life is learning to live in the sweet spot of things.  Just like people who won’t install Win 10 when it comes out until at least the first service pack comes out….you know the type:  Untrustworthy.

Next?

An inquiring reader wondered what kind of input device I used with voice recognition software?

The answer (for years now) has been the Plantronics Audio 995 USB Multimedia Headset with Noise Canceling Microphone – Compatible with PC and Mac which will set you back about $60 bucks.  The good things:  I can walk around with it on, carrying on conversations while out in the shopt ditzing around with this or that – wireless if fun.  And the frequency response is clearer than on some of the cheapo microphones that are sometimes packed with product. (ahem….)

On the other hand, it’s not perfect.  A few weeks ago, my buddy Gaye up at www.backdoorsurvival.com and I were chatting and I was on the treadmill and she complained about noise from my end.  Well, turns out the Plantronics 995 is susceptible to wind noise – the problem went away when I turned off the face-fan on the treadmill.

And?

OK, next computer items has to do with the UrbanSurvival web site.  I’ve made a decision to move everything over to the .www.peoplenomics.com website in a month or three.  The reason?

When I started UrbanSurvival, it was the center of the universe for prepping, futuring, and lots of other things including getting back to the land after sailing for 10-years following by being a serious software sales road-warrior for a few.  In the meantime, the name was seriously ripped off.  The term “urban survival” has been ripped off by hundreds of outfits which have, effectively, made it very difficult to sort out what urban survival is.

Big changes have gone into effect at the US Patent and Trademark Office – and the cost to resigster a trade name for the internet is down to $225 and it’s a do-it-yourself process any idiot can do – if you have a credit card.  Downside is that it’s $450 to protect both the name and the server name (because it’s two  classes of filing) but once done, you’re on solid legal ground.

Whether it’s worth it to hire an attorney when people begin to infringe when you become wildly successful, is another matter, but there’s big money in trademark and copyright infringement.  As this article over here says, some brands are losing 60,000 visitors a month to trademark and name rips…welcome to my world.

To hell with that battle (with the rip off artists).  I have trademarked Peoplenomics, so as soon as the Trademark registration is finished, that will happen.  By the way, www.ruralpioneer.com and the Rural Pioneer name, relative to anything on the Internet, is a registered trademark, so when you get a chance, drop by other there – we’re posting a few items there, including some great contributions from Oilman2, who as you know, is building a similar flee the city and get sustainable site to our home about 40-minutes south of us near Crockett, Texas.

Done yet?

Nope.  Two more items to cover in the computer arena.

First is the ad on the right side of this page.  What is it?  Well….the Amazon ad has replaced the Google ad. 

Now, you might be asking “Gee, George, why do that?”

Well, Thursday I happened to be working on a few tweaks for the site (registering for comments had gotten turned on, needed to migration to a new caching program (so the site may seem faster this morning, hopefully), and I turned off the need to register in order to make a comment on any of the articles around here.

I swapped it out because the “other guys” whose ads were there previously, started serving an ad that headlined “Ure  DOWNLOAD” which I did not authorize.  I would have just killed the ad and been on my merry way except for the fact that when I clicked on the ad, it trying to install malware and that just pissed me off – so out it went.

Amazon doesn’t do that, so they land in that spot.

And last – but certainly not least – I turned off registration over on the comments section.  Mr.

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The picture over to the right is finally revealing what we were mumbling months ago when (in a trance) I wrote about how at some point the last possible person would have bought their sixth automobile.  When this happened, I was expecting there would be no more parking places and we’d enter the jaws of economic collapse. 

We’re getting closer…..closer….closer.  And people like us are to blame.  We look at core retail (retail sales less autos) the same way the Fed looks at inflation (reported inflation less food and energy).  Their way is delusional, mine is not.  (What’d you expect me to say?)

We’ve been half-expecting retail sales to slide down the slopes into oblivion for quite a while now.  For a couple of good reasons all of which is because of bass, four-string, electric guitars.  Lemme ‘splain you, Lucy:

• Look around your house and ask yourself (language alert!) “Do I have enough shit?”  We did this the other day and decided that the one last toy we didn’t have was a four-string bass guitar to dink around with in our home studio. 
• The second MPQ (major pertinent question) is “Can I buy used instead of buying something new?”  In our case, the same exact $200+ new cheapo electric bass we could buy from any of 10-20 online instrument discounters new at retail, was available used from a Guitar Center up in Minnesonsin somewhere  for $99.95 – so we opted for the  the used one.  How many people go on to out-Jump Van Halen at age 66?  Zero, but why not try?
• The third MPQ is whether we need something at all.  The answer in all honesty, is “Prolly not…”  But if it’s a WTF moment and if you don’t owe anyone one anything, why not toughen up the left fingertips so someone will have something nice to say about you when your funeral shows up – even if it’s as little as “Shit, dude, what a riff the old man developed recently…”

Daughter Denise (the real musician in the family) was appalled.  “Dad, the CEO of Guitar Center probably rides around in a jet and why don’t you get something that’s a real instrument so you can get some quality sound out of it?  Like my old Gibson…or my boyfriends [something or other]?”

The simple answer is I don’t play guitar OR bass.  But we don’t have time to read, either, but that doesn’t stop us from owning close to a thousand books…because that’s the AMERICAN thing to do…spend, spend, spend and keep this pony running…

But that’s what makes this a perfect metaphor for America and where we are as a country, don’t you see?  Serious consumer super-saturation.  In other words, few of us have enough  time to use all our existing (language alert!) shit even once a week, let alone, often enough to have it actually make sense to own it, let alone BUY it.

That, and the Feral Reserves report last Friday on Consumer Debt says credit card use is up at an annualized rate of only 4.8% (a tad more than inflation, but likely more people are buying food on credit cards…) while non-revolving (student loans and mobile homes and such) had actually gone negative.

It logically follows that with the Baltic Dry Cargo Index stuck in park (its down to 2009 levels) there should be some signs of spending falling apart.  I mean besides the inventory numbers lately taking off to the upside.

So that’s reality at the street.

Now, with your ViseGrips at the ready, hand me the envelope and let’s see what the latest is from the US Department of Delusions, shall we?  Ooops…make that Census Bureau/commerce, but same diff:

“The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for February, adjusted for seasonal variation
and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $437.0 billion, a decrease of 0.6 percent (±0.5%) from the previous month, but up 1.7 percent (±0.9%) above February 2014.

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You talk about wet!

That feller off to the right is one of the pair of hawks that live on the property and regularly come by for Panama’s handouts of raw bits of chicken when game is scarce for them in the winter.

Looks kind of cold and miserable, but that’s what happens to animals when it’s raining Persians and Poodles in East Texas.

We have just under 4” of rain in the gauge this morning.

Local media are full of exciting adventures cause by the heavy precip, too.

Worse, we are in “take care with the septic system, too, since when the ground is saturated, the septic system tends to get a little cranky.

Tomorrow, Ol’ John from the local septic cleaners will be out for his every-other-year visit.  After a drop in the water table and that, we’ll be back to feeling our usual selves when writing repeated bad puns…

Flushed.

Slowing Down the Diet

Meantime, Mr. Gluten-free Paleo (or, at least mostly so) has continued to drop pounds faster than ever imagined.  And I continue to credit the apple cider vinegar pill daily as helping with the results.  Also, two meals a day and within 8-hours of each other. 

The idea is that Paleo is good, ACV is good, off the fatty foods is good, but also helping is the exercise and eating all meals within 8-hours which (theory says) should give the body a chance to burn through sugars and get on to fat burning.

11-days of serious calorie restriction along with heavy exercise and such, and I’ve dropped 13.5 pounds.

So, yes, it can be done but I will likely declare a “free day” or two in order to give the organs that work hardest when dieting (liver and kidneys from what I’ve read) a chance to catch up with the changes.  This morning will see me wolfing down my  cottage cheese pancakes and that will involve the first use of butter (other than a tiny bit for use in pans) in 10-days.

Dropping a pound a day is NOT a good thing to do.  2-3 pounds in a week is plenty.  But (for whatever reason) being a male, I come from the factory pre-wired to think “If a bit is good, more is better, and the most is best.”

Speaking of which…here’s a dandy success story from a reader out in SF:

George,

I too lost about 40  lbs. about 2 1/2 years ago by changing my diet, exercising every day and moving my routine outdoors for extra Vitamin D benefits and mood enhancing.

My diet is a hybrid of the Paleo diet…No wheat products…although I have a cheat day with a local organic Pizza joint I crave…A lot of fish, chicken and Bison or a lean, grass fed, organic beef. I can’t get enough vegetables and I start each day with a smoothie that is a powerhouse of nutrition by itself.

The smoothie really powers my day..It consists of frozen blueberries, Vibrant Green powder, turmeric, cinnamon, ground flax seed, Apple cider vinegar, Chlorophyll, beets, ginger, taro root, kale/spinach mix and Odwalla blueberry juice.

I munch on almonds throughout the day and have a small piece of chicken. For dinner, I have a meat/fish dish, Organic greens salad and Quinoa/vegetable dish. 

I drink a glass of red wine a few times a week and the one hard liquor the diet does allow is Tequila (agave not grain based like most alcohol). 

But the one thing that is the key to weight loss is exercising…And I don’t mean lollygagging on an elliptical. I mean hard, drenched in sweat work outs that are measurable in increased performance milestones. I run at least 4 miles every day…but I measure my performance not in distance, but by the speed that I run. 

When I first started out, I was running 10:30 minute miles.

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A fair question to ask, straight off the bat, is “Who’s the headless dude with the ball and shorts and has George lost his mind?”

That fellow happens to be a reader whose moniker is Red Dog and he sent in a marvelous discussion of how he’s been doing that one major Chemistry Experiment in life (changing our eating, and thus our appearance and fitness) and it’s a dandy first-hand report.  I removed his head because that would make him personally identifiable, and our massive legal department wouldn’t hear of it without a release and I didn’t think to do that Friday…such is life.

(As to the second part of the question – Has I lost my mind? – the answer should be self-evident.)

Here’s his report:

George you recently asked about thoughts on living locations and weight loss.  For weight loss I suggest you look at Tim Ferriss’s book, The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman Tim believes in PAGG (see chart below) eating beans for breakfast, and chilling your core body temp once a day.  I take cold showers in the summer.  Look at the pictures.  I went from 178 to 153.  

As to living location.  My requirements are I need a place for clean fresh flowing water, where it rains enough for growing veggies, inexpensive land for a runway, land to create a self sustainable life style.  I looked at a map of the US and created a triangle from:

Nashville TN, to Huntsville AL, to the Pickwith dam in SW TN.  I would buy 50 to 100 acres within that triangle.  

I also use Apple Cider based hot sauce on my beans in the morning.  

Policosanol	117	23 mg day.  Fat Loss & cholesterol lowering.
Alpha Lipoic Acid	117	Liver Disease.  Store Carbs in your muscles or Liver, Not Fat cells.
Green Tea	118	EGCG.  Epigallocatechin Gallate:  Inhibits storage of carbs as body fat.  Kills fat cells.  Suggest decaffeinated green tea extract pills.  Mega Green Tea Extract, decaffeinated, 725 mg.
Garlic	119	High doses of Allicin.  Inhibit Fat regain.  Allicin 6000 garlic
		www.fourHourBody.com
Beans	83	Epazote from Mexican groceries.  Lentils.  Soak beans overnight.
Whole Grains	91	Whole Grains or Oats, NO.
BreakFast	95	Eat within 30 minutes of getting up.
	105	Lime or Lemon Juice.  P
	106	Air squats before eating, After eating.
Fermented	111	Sauerkraut & Kimchee.
Cooling Body	129	Ice pack on back of neck in evenings.  Swim in cool water.
	144	Cinnamon good lowers glucose levels.  In coffee?
	146	Eat slower.  At least 30 minutes.
	164	Kettleball swing.
	167	Flying Dog & 2 legged glute.
	172	Kettleball swing from Home Depo.
	176	Back ball myotatic crunch

“Red Dog”t

Just have one more try — it’s dead easy to die,
It’s the keeping-on-living that’s hard.

I have to say, I am totally impressed.  The reader is not a young fellow (I forgot to ask his age, but I’m sure he’ll send that along) but his results lead to all kinds of interesting thoughts in the arena of life extension.

Policosanol was a new one on me, so you can Wiki it – though there is more on the Wikipedia site…

Policosanol^{[pronunciation?]} (or polycosanol) is the generic term for a natural mixture of long chain alcohols extracted from plant waxes. It is used as a nutritional supplement intended to lower LDL cholesterol (“bad” cholesterol) and increase HDL cholesterol (“good” or “healthy” cholesterol) and to help prevent atherosclerosis, though some studies have raised questions about the effectiveness of policosanol.

A second opinion from WedMD is here and when you’re researching, always be sure to check their side effects and cautions tab.  NOW Foods Policosanol 20mg Vcaps will run you about $16-bucks at Amazon.

What we’re really dealing with here are two issues:  One is the effect of weight on life extension while the other is the effect of weight on quality of life.

Looks to me like Red Dog is at about an ideal weight.  What’s more, he’s got the elements going here that will likely lead to an optimally long life.  Much thinner, though, and then the risks come back up.

A Wikipedia entry on the effect of being too lean from calorie restriction is worth some study:

Malnutrition may result in serious deleterious effects, as it has been shown in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment.^[8] This study was conducted during World War II on a group of lean men, who restricted their calorie intake by 45% for 6 months, and composed roughly 90% of their diet with carbohydrates.^[8] As expected, this malnutrition resulted in many positive metabolic adaptations (e.g. decreased body fat, blood pressure, improved lipid profile, low serum T3 concentration, and decreased resting heart rate and whole-body resting energy expenditure), but also caused a wide range of negative effects, such as anemia, lower extremity edema, muscle wasting, weakness, neurological deficits, dizziness, irritability, lethargy, and depression.^[8]

§Musculoskeletal losses[edit]

Short-term studies in humans report loss of muscle mass and strength and reduced bone mineral density.^[9]

The authors of a 2007 review of the CR literature warned that “[i]t is possible that even moderate calorie restriction may be harmful in specific patient populations, such as lean persons who have minimal amounts of body fat.”^[10]

§Low BMI, high mortality[edit]

CR diets typically lead to reduced body weight, yet reduced weight can come from other causes and is not in itself necessarily healthy.

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Three things are a foregone conclusion this morning:

1.  The Emperor has not clothes.

2.  The jobs report will show rising employment.

3.  The devil is in the details.

So here we go…

“Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 295,000 in February, and the unemployment rate edged down to 5.5 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in food services and drinking places, professional and business services, construction, health care, and in transportation and warehousing. Employment in mining was down over the month. Household Survey Data Both the unemployment rate (5.5 percent) and the number of unemployed persons (8.7 million) edged down in February. Over the year, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons were down by 1.2 percentage points and 1.7 million, respectively.

But wait – there’s more:  Fine print says there were 178,000 fewer people in the workforce.  Huh?

Which then means the labor participation rate dropped back to 62.8% after ticking up in previous months to 62.9%

As always, the CES Birth Death Model (the measurement of “statistically estimated into existence”  jobs is key:  But no, the CES Birth/Death model hadn’t been updated so it’s on my “Saved guffaws for later” list.

CES Updated:  132,000 jobs were estimated into existence, out of the 176,000 claimed in the general report, so net provable was…..no hints here… 44,000.  Futures turned down on the confessional…down 60 I looked.

And the alternative measures of labor underutilization – which is the PhDs flipping burgers index, shows a drop from 11.3% to 11.0 percent (good)_ but we wonder about the impact of long term aid running out on these numbers.

You ever see a government report showing the national homeless number?  Me either.

On, one other foregone conclusion:  The market should be down at the open.  The Baltic Dry Shipping Index is up 2 to 561…around 2009 low levels.

Shhhhshhhh!

Listen closely….. hear it?  Air escaping from a bubble is what it sounds like…or is it?  Maybe not just yet. The pop is still in the fridge.

New Trade Figures

From Commerce:

The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S.

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Actor Harrison Ford is in the hospital – doing fine – after having to land his Ryan PT-22 trainer on a golf course near the Santa Monica Airport due to engine failure on takeoff. 

Ford, who’s quite expert at the flying game (including a helicopter/ rotorcraft endorsement if I recall correctly) is not the first fellow to lose an engine. 

The plane he was flying, a WW II vintage PT-22 is a very seriously collectible airplane according to Wikipedia:

In 1941, as the natural development of the earlier ST series, the PT-20 and PT-21 was the military production version of ST-3 with a total of 100 built as the U.S.A.A.C.’s first ab initio monoplane trainer. The rapid expansion of wartime aircrew training required new trainers, and the Ryan PT-22, essentially similar to the PT-21, was ordered in large numbers.^[3] Named the “Recruit”, it entered operational service with the U.S. Orders also were placed by the Netherlands, but were never realized as the nation capitulated to Axis forces. The small order of 25 ST-3s was redirected to the United States and redesignated as the PT-22A. Another order also came from the U.S. Navy for 100 examples. The PT series was in heavy use throughout the war years with both military and civil schools, but with the end of the war, was retired from the U.S.A.A.F.^[4]

As a pilot, I tend to look at stories – like the Ford landing – a little more closely than most.

Back in 1999, Ford as a close brush, too.  That was when a Bell Jet Ranger 206 he was practicing emergency landings in (with an instructor, the landing process for engine out in a helo is called autorotation) back in 1999.

What’s missing in the media reports of Thursday’s event is just where Ford was when his engine conked-out.  If the engine failed when his plane was very low (300-feet, or less) then he would have been trained to fly to the closest thing to land on that was roughly straight ahead.

On the other hand, if he had taken off, was well past the golf course, had more altitude, he would have been inbound attempting the return to land and, seeing he wouldn’t make the field, would have chosen the next best thing – a golf course.

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Yes sir:  A record report from the National Weather Service up the road a piece in Ft. Worth:

“A record snowfall of 2.5 inches was set at dfw Airport yesterday.

The previous record for March 4 was 0.3 inches in 1989.”

So it is with overflowing generosity that we have packaged up the cold front and sent it east overnight where it should be arriving any minute to ease the sweat glands that I just know have been overworked with Global Warming effects this winter.

I would mention that suggesting the cold is because of warming is like suggesting that we all need to eat more to lose weight, slow down to get somewhere faster, and die in order to live.  However, I’ll just bite my tongue (which happens to be frozen to my teeth now).

I’ll just point to the records here and wonder if the folks in Mississippi aren’t maybe overdoing it a bit in declaring an emergency in advance. 

Do you realize that “Woodall Mountain” is the highest peak in the state (806-feet) and that’s just a lump out west or in he Poconos.  I mean, come on, now!  Cowboy up a bit.  Texas highest point is Guadalupe Peak at 8,751 feet…

(Sorry, I will stop teaching geography and how to read thermometers and just skip to the economics for which this site is better known.  Although there is much in common between climateers and mainstream economystics.

Job Cut Report

The ADP Employment Report giveth and the Challenger Job Cuts report taketh away:

Planned job cuts declined slightly in February, as US-based employers announced workforce reductions totaling 50,579, five percent fewer than the 53,041 in January, according to the report on monthly job cuts released Thursday by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.

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