Friday, July 31, 2015

apartment reviews

It has risen high enough above that black water box that the cover floated away

Yeah, i have complaints about the apartment community in which i currently live... the rent is at the low end of market rate and the kitchen is the biggest in town and the layout is split and the location is convenient... that is why we stay... the rest of this entry is from the latest updated review on an apartment review website... just for the record and all...

UPDATE: 8/30/15: I wish I could say things have gotten better here. Yes, we stayed for another year even though they raised the rent more than $100. Promises of substantial improvements have not been kept. The 6-12 inches of flooding that blocks the front door and creates a lake to the next door neighbor's front door remains during any moderate to heavy rain. The gutters that create a shower that blocks the path out of the apartment and are one of the primary causes of the flooding have not been repaired. The flooding gets bad enough to dislodge the bricks that fall over into the sand where a lawn should be. I've uploaded photos. The cracked concrete was partially repaired, but there is still a trip hazard just three feet from the front door and a mold/algea filled dip that fills with a few inches of water on the only way to the parking lot. The promised landscaping has not happened. Misty no longer responds to my emails.

All in all the broken promises are very disappointing. We will look around during the next six months for alternative communities. At this point I will not recommend this place.

Monday, June 15, 2015

windows updates

once again microsoft is taking my computer away from me as windows has been updating for more than an hour now on the second reboot as some items wouldn't install on the first reboot and of course i had to shut down everything i was doing (twice now) to complete the updates so the creative flow is broken... i wonder if mac users have to suffer this... the malicious software removal tool has been installing for at least ten minutes and i wonder if it is once again not finding friendly ground with kaspersky and spybot and window's own defender... all this protection is like a midieval suit of armor, might protect from the big stuff, but prevents you from actually doing much of anything and does it protect from the real threats, the bugs, viruses, germs?... the suit of armor sure doesn't... it does make it quite impossible to move around freely, comfortable, or functionally even... maybe the wmsrtx64 (windows malicious software removal tool x64) is hanging because it is sure taking a long time to install... at least it is letting type this meaningless complaint into a notepad...

and will i have to shut down and reboot yet again after the wmsrtx64 finally installs? (if it installs?)... the process has the computer hotter than it's ever been even with the external fan blowing on it so who knows... the hard drive is spinning like mad... no wonder, kaspersky decided this would be a good time to do a scan... idiocy... so i shut down the root scan (which is not scheduled to run at start up or anytime except twice a week at 2am) and sure enough, windows updates snapped to 'successfully installed' and now wants to restart the computer yet again... fuckers...

so that was an ordeal... two hours gone along with the wonder and excitement and good mood... and we're not done yet... now it's time to run the scans to reassure me that windows update didn't screw anything up (again)... first, kaspersky quick scan... then, spybot system scan... that's where we are now, an estimate 59 minutes left...

finally done... for what it's worth... three hours gone... definitely an inefficient process...

Saturday, May 9, 2015

nba follies

ok, so i turn on a few minutes of the nba playoffs now and then (switching over to most anything else, girl's softball is much more fun to watch because it's not scripted... and i find the refs continue cheating for lebron james as the announcer point out two fouls he should have been called for in the last minute of game three against the Bulls and then they do call the foul on the Bulls in the last minute giving lebron free throws... the cheating is too obvious to make the product enjoyable, even when justice prevails and the bulls win a game in spite of the refs cheating... without the refs, the bulls would have won that game easily... meanwhile, the players are looking more and more ragged... is it the hip hop gangsta thug culture they are part of or just trying to emulate?... is the crack-head look in?... too many players are criminal on the court... it's bad enough they look like they don't enjoy their jobs, playing a game, but the bullying aggression that the refs let the stars get away with is not only against the rules, it makes a mockery of the refs and the game...

after san antonio got knocked off, i realized i am not rooting for anyone, i am rooting against players who just get away with too much rule breaking... now the houston-clippers game and harden gets a foul called when he hit chris paul with his left arm and the announcers point that out and mention that there was more contact on blake griffth on the previous two plays and there was no foul called on houston... the bias is ridiculous turning the games and outcomes into a farce... nba refs are the worst thing ever to happen to the game of basketball...

i just have to turn it off after a few minutes...

Sunday, May 3, 2015

another kaspersky saga

so i took some time to update my kaspersky information because renewal is coming up and as much of a pain as kaspersky can be sometimes, it is still the least troublesome of the kighest rated security software out there so i will most likely renew... except that now the safe money feature in kaspersky is blocking a website i want to get to and so i am on the phone waiting for tech support to tell me if i need to turn off safe money because it isn't actually working as it was meant to work or whether there is something i need to tell to the website i want to get to or whether there is some tweaking i need to do in the kaspersky or browser settings... kaspersky is also blocking a debugging software which i think is windows debugging software which is updated almost every time windows does an automatic update so that is another questions for kaspersky tech support if they ever come on the line... a land line or a charging cord is needed for kaspersky assistance, as is the case with so many companies these days...

so the kaspersky support person tells me that the latest version of the security software has known issues and one is safe money doesn't work so she advised me to uninstall and download the previous version and sent me a link to the previous version so i downloaded the previous version and i am currently waiting for the new version to uninstall and kaspersky blocked windoes uninstall a few times so i hope that doesn't mean i am stuck between cuz kaspersky blocked it's uninstall after it was partially uninstalled cuz i see the uninstall seems to be taking a long time and that would be a leaving the computer with no protection so this should be a lot shorter from a consumer's perspective... and it is preventing me from doing things because it's slowed the CPU to a crawl... and then, i need to call kaspersky tech support back again because the uninstall did not complete and when i went to restart the computer and restart the uninstall the broaser said it was still downloding a file and i saw the kaspersky file was labelled as malware...

so the second (actually third, but that's another story... updating my payment information didn't show up on their site so i had to call to update my information manually... sigh) kaspersky support person assured me the file was not malware and advised me to re-uninstalled, so i did... now at this for three hours, the uninstall says it worked and i rebooted the computer again and then clicked on the installation file with the tech support person reassuring me it was not malware and it was good he stayed on the phone because the installation file was about to install the same version i i just uninstalled and he walked me through the way to get the file to install the version they were advising me to install... the guy told me he will send me a utility that will gather information from the computer if the safe money feature still doesn't work and i should disable the feature if it doesn't work and send them the information with a screenshot of the error message and they will escalate the support ticket to level two support... and now it is opening a browser window... apparently they want me to try a free trial of the product i just installed... yeah, makes no sense...

so now i am turning kaspersky on (lucky i checked or i'd still not have virus protection) as it doesn't turn itself on... and the databses are from september 2014, so i am updating the databses... next i will try to get back to the web page and work i was trying to do three hours ago... of course that is after kaspersky updates... it is still trying... 30% now... it's not my internet connection because i just updated everything in spybot in less than 30 seconds while kaspersky moved from 25 to 30%... so it is the kaspersky updates servers that are extremely slow... so sad that the highest rated security product has so many flaws, is so cumbersome it bogs down the computer, and is so slow... maybe it works better with windows seven or eight... but maybe it's just lumpy programming and slow servers at their end... we are at 38% and going on four hours now...

so twenty minutes later kaspersky is at 80%... ridiculously slow servers, kaspersky... i did a speed test and my download speed is 38.63 Mbps... 39.23... and 39.57 in three tests... kaspersky's download server is still crawling twenty minutes later trying to download the database update file... they must be on dial-up... ridiculous... and now it is at 100% but doesn't say it is done and a root scan has started on it's own... i suppose i will have to figure out how to schedule the scans like i had them before but it isn't the same as it was and couldn't find a scheduling component so i set them all to manual and still a root scan started on it's own... so i will use the utility and send kaspersky all sorts of information about my computer and ask them to improve their scheduling component once again and still consider not renewing my license... i have 33 days to decide... any educated suggestions about alternatives are very welcome...

and the avz antivirus tools system scan continues... the DOS box continues to record information... and now it apparently wants me to save it, though it doesn't say so... it just opens a save window... so i sent the file with my requests and i am moving on to use my computer as I intended to almost five hours ago, though the inspiration and whatever might have been written tonight was erased by Kaspersky... I think it's time for another computer so I can actually do what i want to do while the other computer is down due to faulty software or whatever...

these early days of computers as really annoying...

the nba needs better writers

you know what time of year it is, the nba playoffs time... and the fourth quarter of the san antonio clippers game seven has been interesting... i watch less and less basketball every year and i dvred the fourth quarter of the san antonio clippers series... my eyes see that way too many times the ball goes near blake griffin, san intonio is called for a foul but leanord or duncan can be hit or even knocked to the floor and no foul is called... hopefully the bias will not continue, but it did just let the clippers come back to tie after being down by five... perhaps the script says the clippers need to move on this year...

as usual, a cloudly ending... chris paul falls down after missing a shot with 13 seconds and they call a foul on tim duncan... the annoucers say there was no foul... i didn't see a foul... chris webber gave a look right on national tv that says it all... at least they did call the foul at the other end (that the announcers did not question) so duncan shoots two foul shots ties it up again... and the clippers get the ball back with 8.8 seconds left... why is ginnobli still out there?... chris paul does make a great shot to take another two pint lead with 1 second left... gotta give him credit, he is hurting... but it should be a two point san antonio lead... and then, as san antonio starts it's play, an errant buzzer sounds... so the la clippers buzzer worker cheated and the nba let him or her get away with it... and the buzzer sounds and lets the clippers see the last play the spurs were going to run after the time out so the clippers could know what to do to defend it and that's ok?...

the WWE and the NBA are one and the same, scripted drama sports, not actual sports... the problem with the nba is they have terrible writers because they do not seem to prepare in advance and leave it for home team clock workers or referees to make decisions that influence game outcomes... that level of obvious bias is not fun to watch, and yet, i try to watch anyway because i keep hoping the uninted states stands for freedom, justice, fairness, you know, ethics... seems the greed and control freaks won't let that happen anymore...

show me where it does if you disagree...