Asylum-ET™

I am sure that by now everyone has heard about Noah Cyrus and her lip sync video of Tick Tock. I am also sure that everyone has formed some harsh opinions of the Cyrus family as a result. We have a responsibility to look beyond that though.

Maybe if the radio stopped polluting our children’s ears with inappropriate music on the free air then our children would stop acting like little crazed sex maniacs and junkies. Seriously do you think they are to stupid to put 2 and 2 together to realize what is censored out? I mean most kids do go to public school and learn this stuff. Bleeping words out or replacing them with other less offensive words that mean the same thing is worthless and the radio and TV stations know it but don’t care because sex and drugs sells especially to undeveloped minds.

I heard a radio dj knock the Cyrus family over this as they followed that comment with guess what, the song Tick Tock. How is that acceptable? I personally have met the Cyrus’s and had a number of conversations with Billy, they are decent people trying to raise children in a land gone wrong. Next time when pointing fingers take a good long look in the mirror and ask yourself how things got this way in the first place.

The news in Vermont is now reporting that Vermont drivers are ignoring the law in regard to pulling over when they see/hear rescue vehicles. From what I have witnessed over the past year, this is nothing more than the law enforcement passing their own blame onto us. I have seen a number of police cruisers wrecked due to officers recklessly driving. They seem to think that just because they have lights and sirens that somehow gives them the right to drive like assholes. Just last night I had seen one blast through an intersection with a red light in their direction almost smashing into 2 passing vehicles. Only after the cruiser passed under the red light did he turn on his lights and siren. One other note that needs to be made is that this particular light had one of those emergency switches on it and could have been tripped at any time giving him the green yet it was not used. Driver neglegence yes but not by civilians.

Just yesterday I bought an Acer Aspire One, Model number D250-1371 for my daughter as a birthday present. I bought it mainly because the specs matched those of the laptop she has been using hapily up until the screen burned out. So I took it out of the package to have a look over it before giving it to her so I could make sure everything worked as it should.

At first I was excited because everything seemed to be working just fine. I then copied a few MP3 files to the Music folder and proceeded to play them in the included windows media player that comes bundled with Windows 7. After playing about half of the song the playback stopped and then started again after about half a seconds time. This persisted on every MP3 I tried to play. No specific intervals or anything like that so it is a totally intermittent issue.

This is the type of thing I would expect to happen if I had been over loading the computer by opening tons of intensive applications all at once while trying to listen to music but this is far from the case. There are no other programs running except those required by the OS and the computer itself.

I figured this must just be a driver issue or something to that effect so I decided I would later reinstall from the D2D feature provided and I moved on. I then decided to change the background image on the desktop known to us all as “wallpaper”. This proved to be something that is not allowed by the OS.

I call tech support who BTW is outsourced to people who can barely speak english. They send me to another support number who was an english speaker but he tells me that the first people I spoke to should have helped me and they have been sending people over to them all day that they should not have. He also told me that they have been getting a large volume of calls in regard to their computers that Walmart distributes for them.

I was then refered back to the original number. The next technician told me that I bought the netbook version so I am not capable of changing my desktop wallpaper unless I chose to upgrade for a minimum of $80.00 or more depending on what features I want. This computer comes with Windows 7 Starter. Microsoft opted to try forcing users to upgrade for yet more money just so we the users can access the most basic of functionality that is available in “all” previous graphically based operating systems and then companies like Acer decided to be just as cheap and use bogus crippleware in their hardware.

I then told the support tech that I was begining to think I should just bring the thing back because it is an joke all around but the one thing that would change my mind and make me keep the Acer Aspire One would be if I could just install an operating system that is actually all there without voiding my warranty and you guessed it, this is not an option.

After this I will never buy another peice of technology from Walmart nor will I ever buy an Acer. It should also go without saying that Microsoft can scratch me off their user list as well. The Acer Aspire would be a great little unit if they did not lock you into using a crippled OS. That is just bad marketing and I hope the rest of the people buying this garbage see this and stop supporting them.

Over a good number of years now this blog has been a moved from one blog software to another and back then from this domain to that and so forth. Over the years much has been damaged due to abruptness in moving data and files because I never really cared anyway. I often write just for the sake of writing and nothing more. Over time what is left of the majority of past posts are going to be archived and then deleted and will no longer be public. The only posts that will be found here from herein will likely only be in relation to updates and events on asylum-et.com or anything of that nature.

I have been following some of the talk and Internet posts about the recent alleged outbreak of H1N1 otherwise known as Swine Flu or Avian Flu. I have been rather amazed that the lies and misleading information about the Swine Flu has spread faster than any virus ever did. We as human beings need to take a serious step back and look at the situation. Firstly I am willing to bet that the cases of H1N1 that have been found are nothing new and many people everywhere carry it. I am also willing to bet that this has gone on for a large number of years. The symptoms are the same as any other flu and if treated right away the infected would be just fine which goes for all flu viruses that we have seen.

The only reason we are seeing so many accounts of H1N1 is that we are now targeting that strand specifically so of course the numbers of infected people is going to climb as we never bothered before to determine what type of flu someone had, we just treated it as the flu and moved on.

I believe the number of deaths that have been seen in Mexico as apposed to the lack of deaths from it everywhere else is only due to a lack of proper health care and other failing conditions such as tainted water supplies. I am not suggesting that water is how people are contracting Swine Flu but I am suggesting that drinking already tainted water only attributes to the bodies immune system not being able to tackle the virus as it would normally.

There have also been raging stories about hundreds and even thousands dead from H1N1 but seriously that is not the case. There were 20 something in Mexico that died from H1N1 and the rest are not substantiated one way or the other. Back in 1976 there was such a hysteria over the Swine Flu that the US government started mandatory inoculations which resulted in further complications and deaths that where not necessary. I feel that this does not merit to be called an outbreak or epidemic at all as apposed to something like the HIV virus is a global epidemic. When I can ask any one of you to name 2 people that you know who have H1N1 and you do than I would consider it a serious problem but I can guarantee only 1 in every 1000 readers I have will know only 1 person if that.

I have seen accusations against the government ranging from population control to trying to use it as a test to see how fast people react and what their reaction is while the government monitors things like twitter and the like. I have yet to see any hard fact or even any sources revealed in regard to any of this so I view it all as propaganda and fear mongering. We as the people of the world need to grow up and stop spreading lies and nonsense. Take a little time to think about things before you go run off at the mouth next time. Check your facts, show your sources, and mainly be responsible for your actions otherwise get yourself signed up to go on Jerry Springer because that is the place for that type of thing.

On a final note, let this Swine Flu be a message to us all that we need to take care of ourselves. Wash our hands frequently, prepare our food properly, know the source of our food, eat properly and exercise often. These are all things that will help you to overcome illness.

I am not to be considered an accurate source of information on this as I am not a doctor or scientist. I am only statig my opinions and common sense. Please when seeing or reading anything check things out for yourself before believing any of it.

Bless you all.

Rev. B

I have been using the Google Chrome browser more often lately because it is just so much faster than Firefox or IE. With this has come some serious set backs though when it comes to time.

I would think that with the speed increase in the way pages load and how quick the browser itself opens would be a good thing and it is but not at a sacrifice of very important features.

I use pretty much all of the google command options such as site: link: cache: related: and define:. There are others as well but you get the idea. So anyway I use these rather often to save time. I type them right into my address bar on FF and all is well. Now I try any of these on Chrome and it just does a redirect to my iGoogle page and then I have to type everything again into the search box on the page. At least if the address bar is not going to work like other browsers in this area the least they could do is populate the iGoogle pages search box with the query you just typed in your address bar.

I do like the browser a great deal. I would have to say that it is geared towards web developers more than it is the web user and being that it is this way I think the features a web developer uses most often that are Googles features in the first place should/would be included in their own browser don’t you?

Recently I downloaded Google’s attempt at a web browser. For the most part it is impressive. It seems to handle css rather well. I would compare it to using firefox. It does not suffer the typical issues of the IE variations out there, it does not suffer the same issues that Apple’s Safari browser has with redirects or other header calls. Overall it is well thought out and works great. More or less it is like they stole all the good ideas from the leading browsers and put it all together into a mash that they call Chrome. One issue I have noticed so far is rather trivial but could be viewed as a bug. I have included a little image to show the one and only issue I see so far.

There is a red box I have drawn in the area where an input box would normally be. The fact that they do not show the input box for a file upload is right on since it is not a user editable field anyway but the one thing that is a bit off is that if you click your mouse anywhere in the area that the input field would have been then it is as though you clicked the “Choose File” button. As I said I don’t know if this should be considered a bug but it could be an annoyance anyway.

Google Chrome Upload Field

Rather disappointed with the result of yesterdays upgrade to SP3 for Windows XP. I use a notepad replacement called metapad. I actually replace notepad.exe with it. That is “ALL� instances of it. This is done within micro seconds of each other so windows doesn’t realize it is being done until the files that windows would use to replace the alleged corrupt notepad with have been replaced so the one that appears corrupt is replaced with what is actually metapad. I have had windows XP pro installed for over 3 years now. My notepad replacement has never been an issue before.

Ok so with that said here I notice a problem right off the bat. Metapad has been replaced with notepad after the SP3 upgrade completed. No big deal right? Wrong. I start to overwrite the file(s) as I have done on many machines now for years and the second I right click on the file to copy it into the copy buffer for pasting into the 3 other folders exploder.exe crashes.

That was the first time I noticed it happen anyway. That was within minutes of having upgraded to SP3. Since then I would say every 1 out of 3 times I right click in a folder or on a file explorer crashes. It restarts itself right away but crashes. A few times I submitted the report windows generates. Maybe they will have it fixed in a day or two? We shall see.

It obviously has nothing to do with the fact that I replaced notepad, that much I do know. I am considering reverting back to SP2 if this keeps up though. I don’t care how many alleged security fixes SP3 takes care of because they are all useless if the shell can’t handle a right click.

I have since found that even ctrl + c to copy a file can trigger this explorer crash. After a day of fighting to keep windows exploder stable and free from crashes every few minutes I decided it was an incredible waste of precious time and money so I attempted to uninstall SP3 with the methods that Microsoft outlines for SP3 removal. The first two methods were a total bust. Tried to uninstall, just hung there for 2 hours at the very end. Killed the uninstaller process. Tried the second method to no avail with similar results. Tried the last method, System Restore. That worked like a charm and the crashing exploder is now gone. I am rather disapointed though that I have used XP for over 3 years and not once has explorer deserved to be titled exploder till now. Leave it to good Ole M$ to spoil a good thing.

There was once this website that tracked browser usage statistics and everyone linked to them and then they just went and disappeared :/ Oh well, it happens but when it does then what? Well I decided the other day that this information is still very useful when trying to develop a good website or to make additions to our users experience for with the current one. That evening I wrote a small application that uses an embeddable image that you place in your web page. The image lets us know which browser each visitor is using giving us a general idea of browsers that we want to make sure we have tested. It is also just interesting to follow people’s choice in browsers so it is really just that simple. If you would like to add to the statistics just embed an example image from below into one or all of your web pages and away we go.

You could also just link to the chart image on “one” of your webpages if you wanted. Either image tracks browser usage. or follow the examples below that show how to change the image color so that it can fit your websites theme. Color values are RGB 0-255. Be creative. We use it as a bullet in the footer of the asylum-et.com website.

(X)HTML


<a href="http://asylum-et.com/browser.stats/"><img src="http://asylum-et.com/image.png?r=255" alt="Browser Stats"/></a>
Or
<a href="http://asylum-et.com/browser.stats/"><img src="http://asylum-et.com/image.png?r=255&g=255" alt="Browser Stats"/></a>
Or
<a href="http://asylum-et.com/browser.stats/"><img src="http://asylum-et.com/image.png?r=255&g=255&b=255" alt="Browser Stats"/></a>


HTML


<img src="http://asylum-et.com/image.png?r=0&g=0&b=255" alt="Browser Stats">