. . . 25 [Stifled Uproarious Laughter]

Once in awhile you get a great idea for a cake decoration.

He's only 25 once.

Ignore the Liars

Men, boys - especially the boys - read this email, which I found in my spam folder this afternoon.

It's important to read it thoroughly.

But first, read this:

Even if you've been poking around on naughty websites, and especially if you feel guilty about it, remember this: These creeps have nothing on you. They blast these messages out to every email address with a pulse and hope some poor vulnerable soul reads it, listens to the guilt already stirring within and gives in to their demands for money. That's all they want, is money. Don't give it to them. They can't do a thing to you; they have not been recording your actions. They just want to play the guilt and fear you feel for money.

If you feel bad about what you've done, that's fine. Guilt is your soul's way of prompting you to quit your behavior. Concentrate on changing your behavior rather than listening to that pathetic, greedy voice that got lucky in finding a guilty soul with their shitty email. Don't give them money; that's all they care about.

Don't believe me? Talk with someone you trust. If you're religious, talk to your religious adviser. Talk with your spouse, your parents, a trusted teacher or anyone else you know will tell you the truth. Get help from people who know you and love you and care about you. Don't listen to the empty threats of some Internet jerk who's only trolling around for money.

People have killed themselves out of guilt and fear after they got a message like this. If you're having such thoughts, call the Suicide and Crisis Hotline at 988 now. They're there 24 hours a day.

I'm a religious person and believe sincerely that the worth of souls is great in the eyes of God.

These creeps sending out these emails are honest in one way: They're not shy in saying they want money. That's what you're worth to them: Money. Don't listen to them. They're jerks and liars.

Listen to people who love you, even if it's hard to talk about.

Remember, they're liars. They're only interested in money. Those who are interested in you will help you get past these jerks and their empty threats.

Things My Dogs Bark At

Things my dogs bark at:

1. Squirrels

2. Birds

3. Leaves

4. The absence of squirrels

5. The great dane next door who will one of these days burst through the fence rather than leap to cling to the top of it to bark back

6. Squirrels

7. Random oxygen molecules

8. Cosmic rays

9. Me, if they forget I've left the room

10. Anyone else, if they forget they've left the room

11. The great dane next door even though they don't like the fact it can leap up and perch on the fence to bark back at them

12. Squirrels

13. Each other

14. Nothing in particular

15. Those stupid squirrels

16. Those STUPID squirrels

Hidden Report No. 5, and Dumping Facebook from My Kindle Fire

I've mentioned here before that of the three devices I use to peruse social media, my Kindle Fire consistently delivers the worst experience algorithmically. So tonight, weary of seeing Trump or Musk in every other post, I deleted the Facebook app from my Kindle. I think that'll be a good thing.

Anyhoo, here's what I've hidden in the past few days:

Explain America - TRUMP BEST PRESIDENT EVAR.

DSW Designer Shoe Warehouse - I recently had a poor shoe-buying experience, so I don't want to see shoes advertised on my social media.

LuxeArts - They have a lot of AI-generated VW-centric merchandise ostensibly for sale, but when people go to their website, it's just full of "ideas," not things to purchase. Which is fine in that they're not wasting their money, but still, get your AI crap off my feed.

DraftKings - gambler enablers trying to be socially aware.

HAMMY T.V - I don't even remember why, but goombye.

Sweet Memories - DIY ragebait.

Fredo TV - Lying about Musk giving $112 billion to help the homeless.

Amazed by Animals - Who knows? Probably something stupid.

The Animal Rescue Site by GreaterGood - Non-animal-related ragebait.

The Russian Embassy of South Africa - Lyin' through their teeth.

My rules are three:

1. I will hide pages first, people I have encountered only online second, and people I have met in meat space only on rare occasions. The first two won't care that I've hidden their stuff. But meat space people are meat space people.

2. I will be ecumenical. I may hide crap from one political party more than another, but crap from both sides will be hidden.

3. Legitimate news sites will not be hidden, even if I don't agree with their politics.

I Need A Vacation

I need a vacation. And not just a vacation vacation.

I need a wizard to leave a queer mark on my bright green door declaring to all who read it: "Burglar wants a good job, plenty of Excitement and reasonable Reward."

That kind of vacation.

Media Literacy is Dead

I'm seeing more people complain that East Idaho News is posting "more" news that's not necessarily taking place in East Idaho.

These are complaints from people who appear to be getting their news exclusively from what they wander into on Facebook, rather than by going to the news website itself.

If this is how you get your news, you're doing the news wrong.

Because remember this: If you get your news from social media, you're only seeing what the algorithm deems fit to show you. It's going to show you things that get a lot of interaction, a lot of traffic and a lot of comment. It's not going to show you everything a news site, your friends, or whatever posts on social media.

If you want news, go to news sites. Use their filters to suss out what you want to read and disregard the rest. East Idaho News (and a lot of other local news sources) makes it pretty simple to do so.

It saddens me to see peoples' media literacy falling at the rate it is. The internet and social media have made it so much easier to interact with the news than ever before, but the majority of people have become too lazy to use it correctly. They don't seek it out; they wait for the news to fall into their laps, and when it's not the kind of news they want to read, they complain about it.

Of course, this is anecdotal. But I'll bet good money that I'm right.

Hidden Report No. 4

Here's what I've hidden in the past few days:

A Sailor's Wife -- general ragebait.

Conservative Byte by WJ -- conservative crapola.

Russian Foreign Ministry -- propaganda.

Althea Riley -- conservative crapola.

Your Nation -- general asshattery.

Brietbart -- black belt asshattery.

Again, less time spent on social media lately.

Still, my Kindle Fire is the device that shows me the most crap I end up hiding. My desktop experience is getting better by degrees. My Samsung phone still remains the best.

1. I will hide pages first, people I have encountered only online second, and people I have met in meat space only on rare occasions. The first two won't care that I've hidden their stuff. But meat space people are meat space people.

2. I will be ecumenical. I may hide crap from one political party more than another, but crap from both sides will be hidden.

3. Legitimate news sites will not be hidden, even if I don't agree with their politics.

Ignoring the Problem Continues to Pay Off

A follow-up to yesterday's post, in re: Why am I doing this?

A year or so ago, our solar provider contacted us and said Tmobile was going to discontinue the 2G network their controllers rely on to send information. They offered a few routes to get past the closure, including connecting the controller to a home internet network.

I did what every red-blooded American did with the first notice, and ignored it. Much later, they sent another notice, and I ignored it. Then another notice, and I decided, okay, I'll contact them and get set up for the change. (Note, I'm not sure I ever heard back from them, which is a bad way to reinforce my past ignoring of the problem.)

In the meantime, the deadlines kept getting extended. The last email I have says the networks would be shut down by April 2024. Yet I'm still connected. Even yesterday when I checked, I'm still connected. The deadline has indeed again been pushed back:

Even with this, it's unclear whether their 2G service is ending. Nevertheless, I've got the ethernet cable nearly strung to make any changeover that much easier. We'll see what happens.

That's a Lotta Holes, Son

So more than a year ago I bought a coil of ethernet cable for some random projects around the house, the biggest being stringing some wire from our solar power controller on the north side of the house to where our router is on the south side of the house.

I was rearranging some things in the study today and decided today was the day.

And man do I suck at snaking wire.

I had hoped to use some speaker wire that was in the ceiling already to pull the new cable through, but that wire was really stuck. So I went to the old standby, poking holes in the walls so I could fish the cable through.

I did succeed in getting the wire mostly snaked -- I have to finish by getting it from the pantry into the crawlspace under the bathroom and then out the side of the house toward the power controller. Then I have to actually get the solar power company to come and connect the cabling, since I'm not allowed to poke the innards of the device.

 

Tester Tested

More than a decade ago, as part of a furnace installation in our basement, I ran some ethernet cable through the ceiling in the study so I could have a wired connection between my printer and the computer.

A few years ago things stopped working, shortly after I hung some pictures, so I thought I'd skewered the cable with a nail.

Tonight I decided it was time to pull that cable and in the process snake a new one through the wall. But it also gave me an opportunity to test the nifty cable tester I got for Christmas.

I plugged things in and the tester told me the cable was good.

Not believing the lying tester, I turned off the wifi on my computer, plugged the cable into it and into the network switch I'm installing, and the cable worked just fine.

So there's less cable snaking I have to do as I build the network. Pretty cool.

And wow, the camera on my phone is terrible.