Dumb and Such

My Computer’s Still Personal

One Facebook friend told another (out of my presence, I suppose he thought) that I’m paranoid about The Cloud. Here. Read the exact quote for yourself:

image of Facebook comments about me being paranoid about the cloud
IDs blurred to protect the…ah…insolent. 😉

His opinion versus my opinion — I’ll take mine any day! 😀

And I’ll even throw in this next piece for free:

The Cloud’s My-Mom-Cleaned-My-Room Problem

This is not a short reflection on my childhood neither of my parents was the room-cleaning type but a metaphor for the set of web services we call the cloud. We all know the feeling of logging into Facebook/Tumblr/Twitter/Netflix/Pandora/Gmail and realizing that the interface has changed.

[…you really ought to read the missing guts…]

The personal computing era rose at a time when bandwidth was very constrained. Software ran locally and most individuals’ computers were not hooked up to networks. Your computer *was* personal. And when you got a new one, the first thing most people did was to customize the desktop background. BBS, AOL, and the web began to change all that, but we still thought of our computers as objects distinct from the Internet. You ran software (games, word processors, organizing tools, music players) inside your box without reference to the wider web.

Now, more and more of the computing power we use comes from a CPU across the Internet. We no longer own our digital homes. Instead, we live rent-free with our parents. There are some serious upsides to living with your parents, particularly in today’s economy. You save money. You don’t have to worry about figuring as many things out on your own. Someone else fixes all the messes. And it’s harder to make a a mess when you’re being constantly monitored.

But the freedom of usage that defined personal computing does not extend to the world of parental computing. This isn’t a bug in the way that cloud services work. It is a feature. What we lose in freedom we gain in convenience. Maybe the tradeoff is worth it. Or maybe it’s something that just happened to us, which we’ll regret when we realize the privacy, security, and autonomy we’ve given up to sync our documents and correspondence across computers.

So, no, I don’t Carbonite or Sync or Mozy or GoogleDocs or DropBox or Office 360.

I still believe in privacy and security.

I still believe in personal computers and personal local-box software.

I’m old school. 😯

I don’t live with my parents.

Go ahead. Call me paranoid for that too! 🙄

Someday a tornado is going to come out of that cloud and remind you of me.

PS: I have some Facebook “privacy” news in the hopper for my next post.

Huge Regret: I Trusted Firefox

I have been a loyal Firefox user for years. Hugely so.

Well, we reap what we so(w). Hugely. Actually, harvests are always more huge than what we sow, but that’s another (hugely important) subject.

About 23 hours ago I tried something new in my Firefox browser: creating an additional profile in a custom location. (That’s actually two new things.) Then I deleted the profile, having done absolutely nothing with it.

My payback from the world’s best browser? 🙄

Firefox deleted hundreds of non-Firefox files in the custom location, including tax and banking records. And the action can’t be undone.

I. Was. Just. Sick.

Two questions for Firefox:

  1. Why does your Profile Manager do such a stupid thing?
  2. Why doesn’t the dialog box tell us that’s what you’re going to do?

Just to be “fair,” I’ll acknowledge that if I had done even a little research online, I would have learned that Firefox does such a stupid thing.

Deleting a Firefox Thunderbird or SeaMonkey 2 profile

Warning: The folder for the profile you are planning to delete may contain non-Mozilla files, if you created the profile in a custom location see above. If you use the “Delete Files” option to delete that profile, the entire folder and all of the contents will be deleted, including any non-Mozilla files it may contain. This cannot be undone! For this reason, you should choose the “Don’t Delete Files” option when deleting a profile. If you want to delete the profile folder, you can do that manually.

(Emphasis not mine.)

But why should I assume I need to research such a thing when the dialog box doesn’t warn of it? (Emphasis all mine.)

Firefox Profile Manager

Click image to see more of the screen shot

I. Feel. Betrayed. By. My. Trusted. Browser. 😳

Will I now switch to Google Chrome? 🙄

Well, how do I know it won’t pull something just as dastardly?

Besides, it’s Google. 😯

OK. That’s enough moaning for now. I need to see how much I can restore from back-up. And then see how much of that backed up data needs updating.

PS: No, I didn’t have time to put this together. But this is my way of giving back to the Firefox community. Or something. 🙂

Ultimate Blue-Collar Praise?

In it’s full version, this statement is a dumb-yet-telling (and elitist) proclamation:

the ultimate blue-collar acknowledgment of a job well done

And that would be what, according to a major mainstream magazine?

Were Quayle and Gore as foul-mouthed as the current and previous Vice Presidents?

What makes people use profane and vulgar words?

And why has such speech crept into the hearts and mouths of Christian men and women?

HT on the quote: World Magazine

Too Narrow to Hide

Can I hide my sin behind a hypocrite?

behind fence postWe humans have a disposition to hide behind the failings and shortcomings of another.

That is, we try to.

It really is a dumb effort.

But we’re still prone to try it.

Somehow, we seem to think another’s flaw provides us with the flawless excuse.

Another’s gossip and evil surmisings are too narrow to hide my vengeful thoughts or fight-fire-with-fire speech.

Someone’s hypocrisy is too narrow to hide my apostasy.

Another’s wrong is too narrow to hide my unforgiveness. In fact, my own hurt at another’s misdeed is too narrow to hide my unforgiving spirit. Read it all

Fun at Dollar Tree

Do you know how to have fun at Dollar Tree?

Check out this cropped image I just “lifted” there:

Fun in Dollar Tree

Hold it, hold it.

We’re allowed to do that at Dollar Tree?!

Ruby and I were there less than an hour ago…and I had no idea!

Oh well.

Disclaimer: The link above is where the full image is for the cropped image above. Well, it was there at the time of my visit, anyway.

My Self-Professing Is Better Than Yours?!

In my circles, branding someone a “self-professing” anything generally doesn’t rise to the level of a compliment.

I find that odd.

I profess to be a Christian.

Does that make me a self-professing Christian?

I believe so.

You got a problem with that?

Maybe you think I’m suspect as a Christian because I profess to be one?

Really, though, it’s weird to read or hear one self-professing Christian use self-professing to speak of another self-professing Christian.

I just read another instance of that in Issue 100 of the newsletter from Faith builders. In an otherwise excellent article (The Anabaptist Advantage Among Muslims) by self-professing Christian TDW, this:

Then in 2001 the self-professing “born-again” President George Bush called for another round of violence against the Muslims when he said…

OK.

Like I said, TDW’s article is excellent. I hope to secure permission to republish it on one or more of my sites. I truly do expect them to grant me permission, even though I plan to chide them for the above reference to the President.

After all, how can I possibly believe that my self-profession is more accurate than anyone else’s?

And, still, I use self-professing on others, though less and less intentionally so.

And when I do, it’s less easy to overlook the importance — the urgent necessity — of making sure that my own self-profession is under-girded and made believable by the evidence blooming fragrantly from my own life.

PS: I understand that we adjective-ize someone with self-professing when we have reason to question the sincerity and depth of his commitment to Christ. But still…

Above all, love God!