Day: 06/11/2018

YAWN – Marilyn Armstrong

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 16 Comments
RDP Prompt #11: Bastion

Bastion. Reminds me of Bastille. Momentary thought: Maybe it has a similar Latin root. Look it up? But they don’t give Latin roots in online dictionaries. I’m too lazy to find a real dictionary.

You don’t have to be a thick-walled tower. You can be a bastion of regressive political thinking or a bastion against irregular punctuation.

Is the there a verb for this? Like “bastuate”? Or a variant noun, like “bastuation”? The definition for Bastuation would be “sticking with whatever you are sticking with long after everyone else stopped caring about it.”

Or maybe just “bastard”? A nasty-tempered bastuator?

It’s going to be a beautiful day outside. Sunny. Relatively cool. Bright skies. As for me, I think I shall spend at part of it napping. It’s Monday, but I already feel Friday coming on.

EIGHTY-FOUR WORDS – Marilyn Armstrong

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 6 Comments
SUCCINCT

Short. To the point. Brief.

We were up early. Took the crumpled car in for repair. Picked up a replacement. Came home to coffee. Isn’t it great the “fix the car” guy is a quarter of a mile from here? We didn’t even have to go into town.

We’re back. Rental car in the driveway. Hot coffee in our cups.

Brief? This is brief.

Succinct. Short.

I’m going back to drinking coffee. This is shaping up to be a napping kind of day.

ODDBALLS FROM SATURDAY AT RIVER BEND PARK – Garry Armstrong

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 13 Comments
Cee’s Odd Ball Photo Challenge

The ongoing issue of what, exactly, is oddball remains. I took a bunch of pictures of people in the park this past Saturday. Odd pictures insofar as I have no idea when I might otherwise use these pictures. I guess that makes them as odd as anything I’m like to be taking.

Here is a man who needs another hand.

Marilyn on her way back to the car after taking a few pictures.

Marilyn deep in trying to figure out what to do with a fisheye lens. She never did get an answer. She says she needs more practice.

Two guys. Fishing.

HOW DID THAT HACK HAPPEN? – Marilyn Armstrong

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 16 Comments

A friend asked me how a hack could happen.

You can find plenty of information about this in the news almost every night. Multiple attempts by many governments to locate these guys and take them down are always underway. The problem is, there are a lot of them. Many are funded by the Russians and for all know, other hostile governments.

Does everyone think these guys hacked our election, then quit hacking?

They’ve hacked (that I know of): Equifax, Bank of America, Adobe, Lands End, Amazon, Facebook … and probably a lot more than that, but these I know about because they have all been in touch with me to warn me.

Forget about the dozens of television series that deal with this issue. If you read a newspaper or watch the news, the information is not exactly secret. The busting of these hacker rings has been major news for at least three years and probably longer, so if you’ve missed it … you should catch up. Hackers thrive on people who don’t understand what’s going on. That’s why they pick on the elderly so often.

Essentially, it all happened in one afternoon. Anyone whose identity has been stolen can understand how quickly your financial life can fall apart. Fortunately, that didn’t happen to me. I lost no money, although I had to spend $90 on a new router. I also spent a lot of time rebuilding my computer, but since I did it myself, it didn’t cost me anything.

Should credit card companies be more on the alert? Absolutely. They are pretty sharp even now. Far more alert than our so-called government who seem collectively helpless to fix this. I think they don’t want to fix it, but what do I know, right?

Anyone can call Experion, Equifax, or TransUnion and ask that they put your credit on alert. You can do this automatically on the phone and you only have to call one company who will alert the other two. If one of you has been hacked or think you might be in danger, you don’t have to wait until they have hacked your accounts before you deal with it.

Once you’ve set up an alert, all credit companies must contact you directly before granting credit in your name or changing your address, telephone number, email address, or password. I can’t even count the number of people who’ve been hacked on Facebook — had their accounts stolen. I think someone stole my Twitter account, but since I never used it, I didn’t know about it for weeks.

If you think you are safe because nothing like this has ever happened to you, you are naïve. It can — does — happen to everyone. Anyone. Young. Old. Retired. Poor. Rich. It hurts more when you are poor, but it won’t stop the hackers. If you’ve got any money, they’ll take it and leave you with nothing.

These are not people with a conscience or a sense of right and wrong. They don’t care what happens to you. They do not care if they kill you in the process, either.

So, here’s the timeline:

1.  Facebook gave my personal data to Cambridge Analytica. For a fee, I’m sure. I know this because Facebook told me they did it. They didn’t seem upset about and felt I shouldn’t be either. Right.

2.  Cambridge Analytica sold my data to hackers, most of whom are supported by the Russians.

3.  They got more information by hacking my home router. This had already happened in Europe, but no one mentioned it on our news, so we didn’t know. By the time they did mention it, it was 24 hours too late for me.

4.  They pretended to be a different company and had sufficient data to make me think they might be real. When they demanded money to protect my computer, I instantly knew they were hackers.

5.  They attempted to take money from a bank who controlled 3 credit separate cards, two of which I knew about. I stopped the transfers and they never got anything. The final one I only discovered today, but again, I’m covered, so no loss to me.

6.  They locked my computer and demanded $1000 to “protect” it. Talk about a mobster move! Not a snowball’s chance in hell. There’s no guarantee if you give them money they will release your computer anyway and I’ll bet they don’t. Not exactly trustworthy guys.

7.  To get my computer back, I had to rebuild it. From scratch. Which was not so bad — boring but not difficult. Because I back up my files, I was able to restore everything. In all, I lost one document, but I can live with it.

8.  I had to buy a new router with a protective patch.

Does this mean they can’t get me — or you — again? Of course not. These hackers are gigantic organizations heavily funded by Russian money. if they can hack Equifax, they can bypass my protection on a whim. And the places they operate are glad to have them. They hire people. They are a big business.

At the bottom of my personal mess is Facebook. They casually took my personal data and sold it to hackers.

It’s so simple …

Facebook made this happen. Our government helped them by refusing to go after the hackers. If you think Trump is a good guy, remember he and his team have protected these guys from the get-go. They have allowed the hacking, encouraged it, and supported it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are also getting paid off.

You could be next. They may already have your number.

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT – ELLIN CURLEY

/ Ellin Curley / 18 Comments

I am fascinated with the concepts of time travel, parallel universes and the Butterfly Effect. Fortunately for me, there are several TV shows today that deal with these things. One is Timeless and another is The Flash. The Flash is a Marvel comic based series in which the hero can run so fast that he can bend time. He can move both forward and backwards in time. Timeless follows a government team of time travelers who have to keep going back in time to prevent the ‘bad guy’ from messing with major past events and drastically changing the timeline.

In both of these shows, each trip back in time results in an altered present. In each, a seemingly random individual who is important to one of the main characters, is either dead in the present or was never born and no longer exists in the present timeline.

This brings up the Butterfly Effect, a theory popular with time travel enthusiasts. The theory, mostly used in science, states that a small change can result in a large, unrelated change down the road. In everyday life, this means that unimportant decisions, like whether to go out to dinner or eat in, can lead to very different ‘storylines’ in your life.

There is both a movie and a play that depicts the parallel universes created by a minor life decision. The movie is “Sliding Doors” from 1998 and stars Gwyneth Paltrow.

It tracks the different careers and love lives that the heroine would have if she a) catches a particular subway train or b) misses the train. For example, if she catches the train, she also gets home in time to catch her boyfriend in bed with another woman. If she misses the train, she also misses this tryst. Her life takes very different paths depending on that fluke of timing.

butterfly-effect-cartoon

The play was a musical called “If/Then,” starring Idina Menzel. The show follows the heroine’s parallel lives if she either chooses to go to lunch with friend ‘A’ or if she chooses to go to a play with friend ‘B’ instead.

Interestingly, in both the movie and the play, the heroine ends up with the same ‘love of her life,’ just at different times in her life. Her career paths diverge but I think most people like to believe that some people are ‘destined’ to be together.

The Jewish concept of ‘Beshert’ says that every soul is a half soul and that there is another person in the world who is their perfect ‘other half’. So in time travel shows, many aspects of life are allowed to be affected by chance. But we don’t seem to want to accept that chance can also change the big things in life, like true love.

TimeTravelSome time travel writers have a different theory. They talk about the fact that the past ‘resists’ change. Rather than believing in the Butterfly Effect as it relates to time travel, many believe that at least the major events in history are more predestined and less susceptible to change.

It might seem easy to keep a major past event from happening, especially if small changes in the timeline can eventually result in big ones. But time travel writers feel events, like WWI, the assassination of JFK, or the sinking of the Titanic, will always find a way to happen, no matter how hard you try to prevent it.

You might want to read Stephen King’s brilliant book “11/22/63” about attempting to go back in time to prevent the JFK assassination. It was also made into a mini series, but the book is much better.

I guess it is easier to accept the idea that relatively small things, like the details of an individual’s life, are changeable and not ‘meant to be.’ Maybe this is because on a small-scale, cause and effect is more linear and knowable. On the other hand, historians are still arguing about the multiple and interrelated causes of the Civil War.

delorean time machineMy grandfather was hit by a truck and killed when he stepped off a curb too soon at the age of 88. I used to obsess about what led him to that exact spot at that exact time. I used to imagine the tiny things he could have done differently that would have gotten him to that spot even a second earlier or later.

For about a year after that, I would imagine each time I reached a curb, that it could be my last moment on earth — if the stars were so aligned. Maybe this is the root of my love for some of these theories.

JUNE IS SQUARE – ROOF 11 – Marilyn Armstrong

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 8 Comments

It’s that time of year again and squares are back! 

Down the road in Mendon, they have a diner. It’s a fully restored Worcester Dining Car from 1950.

Miss Mendon began her journey in 1950 as a hand-drawn sketch at the desk of a designer at the Worcester dining car company in Worcester, MA. Since then she has had a storied history and has made a number of stops on her way to the little town of Mendon, MA. She has been painted, re-tiled and seen her share of characters come and go over the years. She has seen good times and not so good times, heard stories of times gone by and secrets never to be repeated but managed to come through the years with grace and character.

Miss Mendon actually started her life as Miss Newport and her car number was #823. Even though her car number is 823 she was actually the 623 car built since they began their numbering sequence at 200. She was delivered on May 16, 1950, to her first owner. They still have the original hand sketches of the designer’s impressions of the car.

Not much has changed after all these years. The car layout remains the same as it did in 1950; we have modernized it a little bit, added a new dining area onto the side, and built a professional kitchen onto the back of the car and, re-chromed the seats and cleaned up and restored all of the finishes.

I especially love the curved ceiling. You can get more information and all the original hand sketches at:

http://www.missmendondiner.com/about-us.php

Well, the theme is ROOFS (or rooves if you prefer). Your roof can be;

A – any type, any condition, any size, and in any location.
B – it could be a shot across rooftops, of one roof like today or even a macro
C – you might prefer to spend some time under the eaves and in the attic, or enjoy the view from above as Brian has already done today.

See you tomorrow!