Recently, a friend was asking me what antivirus program and firewall I use. I thought I’d put my answers in this week’s journal, in case my answers might be helpful to others:
I use the free Avira antivirus. I’ve used Avast, and like it, too. I don’t use a VPN because it would slow our
Internet, it cannot guarantee privacy, it won’t protect from malware or
phishing attacks, and so on. I use the Windows Security firewall.
I go with whatever is quick, easy, and free for all these things
(providing they have decent reviews). If you knew how many customers I
had to help when I worked at our local Internet Service Provider a few years
ago, after they had purchased expensive, fancy-schmancy Internet protection –
only to find it wasn’t compatible with their computers, and kept them from
getting to the websites they wanted to look at. Many of them were totally
convinced it was Megavision’s fault.
A lot of times, the problem was that they never updated
their old computers (“Updates will fry your motherboard!” “Updates will wipe out your entire hard
drive!” “Updates will sabotage your
retirement funds!”), and many of those PCs – often, castoffs from their
children – simply couldn’t run the new antiviral programs. Sometimes
their machines were already running antivirus programs and firewalls, and when
they installed new programs they’d purchased, the two antivirus platforms
clashed with each other, and neither could work.
In all the years I’ve used computers – since 1998 – I’ve had
only two viruses infiltrate my computers, and I had no trouble eradicating them
on my own, using online instructions. None of our financial data was ever
compromised. Someone once hacked into my PayPal account back in 2001, but
PayPal immediately shut them down, and they didn’t get a red cent.
Maybe I’m fortunate... but it helps that I steer clear of websites
that look untrustworthy. Megavision had
some customers who’d gotten viruses and worms at websites that were supposedly
set up to help people clean or speed up their computers, but actually installed
infections on their machines. And then there are always those curious
individuals who just must click on that odd link they get in an email or
Facebook message. One time, a person who worked right there in the office
clicked on a bad link in an email – whilst using one of the main computers,
which had all the data from every customer on it.
It wasn’t long before his computer had sent every single
customer a ‘bad’ email disguised as a notification from Megavision, complete
with the infecting link. The embarrassing thing was that the link had
obvious nasty references in the wording. And that’s what the person – and
other likeminded persons – clicked on. Yikes.
You might think I’m too laid-back about computer
protection... but the programs – almost all of them free – that I’ve used
through the years have worked well for me. I want programs that are
simple enough for my little peabrain to understand, and that work quietly in
the background from the time I install them to the time I discard of the
computer, without constantly telling me to upgrade, or to verify their
performances by ‘clicking here to agree that yes, this is malicious malware
that needs to be confined to sector Q’.
And that’s my opinion, which may not be worth as much as you
think it is.
A friend emailed me, asking for my
recipe for blueberry streusel muffins.
I wrote back, “My recipe is really, really difficult and
time-consuming –” and sent her a picture of the Duncan Hines Simple Mornings Blueberry
Streusel box. “I even put brown farm
eggs in it!” I added.
The friend who was working on Internet protection asked me
about ‘Zander’. Having never heard of
it, I looked it up.
I should’ve looked up Zander ‘Insurance’.
The only ‘Zander’ Google knew about was the fish, aka sander
or pikeperch.
I grabbed a picture of the North Dakota state record Zander
and sent it to my friend, writing, “I didn’t know Zanders could protect your
data!”
My friend informed me
that Zander Insurance monitors finances and insures loss of funds up to a
million dollars for individuals and two million for a family plan. They also monitor property titles/deeds as
well as the dark web. They will work to
repair issues caused from identity theft.
Oh. Well, I find the fish more... interesting. But if I ever come in contact with this
entity called ‘finances’, I’ll be sure to check into that other Zander thang.
If anybody steals our identity, they’re going to be
trying to sell it back to us as fast as they can, before they get in trouble
for not paying our bills. Haha! It’ll be like The Ransom of Red
Chief. 😆
Another
friend sent me a video of her small-but-pretty house that day, saying that it
was being overrun with the grandchildren’s toys, and wondering how I coped with
that problem when all our children were home.
(Did
I accidentally hang out a shingle reading, ‘Free Advice Here’?? Trotting out to the front porch to take a
look...)
(Nope,
there’s nothing hanging from the side of the house but that very determined
Boston Ivy.)
With
nine kids, we often had toys here, there, and everywhere, because we had no ‘playroom’
as such, after we had to turn playrooms into bedrooms as more kids came
along. So the living room and the music room were the ‘playrooms’. Most nights after all the children were in
bed, I scurried through the house straightening and lining things up. A
pile of 30 cars, big and little, looked much nicer all lined up in a
half-circle on the hearth, according to size. A jumbled stack of dolls
looked better seated side by side next to the loveseat. Coloring books
and workbooks got stacked together on the end table. I arranged things in
like groups as neatly as possible, and I varied the grouping from day to
day. Toys that hadn’t been played with for a while I sometimes put away
in the labeled boxes in the basement ‘shelf room’. If I carried anything
downstairs, I’d most often grab something out of another box to take its place,
something the children hadn’t seen for a few weeks or months.
The
same amount of toys were there, but it looked more like a neatly organized toy
shop than a junkyard. One benefit of
doing this was that all those toys looked like more fun to the children when
they got up the next morning. ’Course, they
could upend everything and stir it all back together again in five minutes
flat. 😂
The
house wasn’t all that big, really, and we had a lot of ‘stuff’; but it was
usually ‘half an hour from company’, as they say.
Tuesday night I finished the fifth quilt
for my customer who lives in Washington State.
This one is called ‘Tulips’. I used a pantograph called ‘Butterfly
& Swirls’. It was difficult enough to figure out the correct route
through that panto that I had decided to take it off my pantograph webpage before
I was through with the first row. But... at the end of the row, I flipped
off the overhead lights, the better to see the quilting, and walked around in
front of the quilting frame to take a look at it.
I discovered that I like this pantograph. I
like it well enough to leave it in the mix for the next person to choose, if
they wish. 😊
I
used lime-colored 60-weight Bottom Line thread on top, and light dusty-green
60-weight Bottom Line thread in the bobbin. The quilt measures 42” x 52”.
Wednesday, there was a news story online about authorities
searching for an injured mountain lion that had been struck by an automobile
near Fullerton, 30 miles to our west. Mountain lions often follow the Loup River,
venturing into nearby gullies and arroyos.
The Loup gives them an easy trail from Fullerton east toward Genoa and Monroe
and points just two miles south of our house, where lions have been seen on
game cams along the river.
I’m glad Tiger kitty
doesn’t wander much when he’s outside, and stays indoors a good deal of the
time.
Thursday morning, I
heard on the radio that the big wildcat had been found in a wooded area not too
far from where he’d been hit. Poor
thing. But at least the danger to humans
and smaller animals that a big, injured lion can pose was no longer an issue.
By suppertime, I was more than halfway through my customer’s
‘Lazy Angle Sampler’, aka ‘Christmas Stars’ quilt.
I’d purchased a king-sized batting for the lady’s Pinwheels
quilt, as it was 112 ½” long. However,
the quilt didn’t need nearly as much for width.
By loading quilts carefully, I managed to use the excess batting for two
of the other quilts. Therefore, I wound
up with a queen-sized and a twin-sized batting left over, which I deducted from
the lady’s bill.
After our midweek service that evening, we visited with
family and friends, played with the grandchildren, and then went home for a
late supper. Afterwards, I went back to
my quilting room, and by a quarter ’til one, the Lazy Angle Sampler was done. I used 40-weight Omni thread in ‘Butter’ on top, and
60-weight Bottom Line thread in pale yellow in the bobbin. The pantograph
is ‘A Merry Li’l Christmas’. The quilt measures 66” x 84”.
And with that, I had finished the last of Donna’s quilts
before any other quilts arrived.
There are a few more that I’ve promised to do, and then I
plan to accept no more until I’ve finished a few of my own projects. I
must, must get those photos scanned.
At least I got Norma’s old family photos scanned – all 1,262 of
them.
I think I managed to get all the photos labeled correctly except
for one picture of an unknown man and woman standing in front of what I believe
to be a 1946 Chevrolet Fleetline. I wonder if anyone will notice that I
labeled it, “Mr. and Mrs. Whozit and the Fleetline”? hee hee
Thursday, I got back
to the scanning – and I found a copy of this picture that, unlike the previous
one, had not been in Larry’s wallet for several years, so it’s in much
better condition. I was 12 and in the 8th
grade when the photo was taken in the autumn of 1972.
That afternoon, I took Loren a meal, then went to the
Salvation Army to drop off a few things (such as the heated cat bed that the
Goodwill will not accept, goofy people), and then I took the last two of my
customer’s quilts to the post office.
On the way home, heading north, I pulled into the left lane
of the two lanes that turn west onto the four-lane, and stopped at the
light. I was a little behind and to the
side of a truck with a flatbed trailer loaded with wooden walls. The light turned green. Traffic started going around the corner.
I headed through the intersection right beside the truck and
trailer. It makes me nervous to be on
the inside curve with a truck, so I kept a close watch in my right sideview
mirror.
Good thing I did, too, because that flatbed did not track
neatly in the tire prints, as it were, of the truck that was pulling it. It was cutting far enough into my lane, that
there would not have been enough room for my Jeep between the trailer and the
fast-approaching median.
I hit the brakes, jerking the wheel to the left as I did so.
At the same time, I glanced forward at the truck’s cab to
see if the driver might happen to be looking in his mirror and see the drama
occurring beside his trailer.
That’s when I noted that the truck was black, and the
sleeper was red.
That’s pretty distinct.
One of a kind. And that’s when I
realized, It’s my very own husband who’s about to sideswipe me!
Now, that would’ve been plumb embarrassin’. Good thing I was paying attention.
The wooden walls are from a hog barn Larry and Teddy are
taking down near Gresham, about 40 miles to the south. They plan to put the barn back together again
on Teddy’s property.
Oh, and Larry plans to someday repaint the truck and sleeper
to match, all red. And get a trailer
that trails, as opposed to blazing its own path.
A friend made these
aprons for Hester, almost 7, and Lydia, almost 5. Thinking they were much too cute to be used as
aprons, I made dresses to go underneath them, and thus turned them into
pinafores. These pictures were taken May
17, 1996.
Here’s Hannah with her 86 Mazda 626GT
turbo. See Caleb looking out the door? This was June 17, 1996. Hannah was 15.
In this album are pictures from a camping trip to Johnson
Lake, ten miles south of Lexington. Here’s
the tent we stayed in:
I sent the pictures to Keith, and he promptly wrote back, “Haha,
that is the tent that was being set up upside down one night. I was just telling the family about that last
week.”
“Yes,” I replied, “and I had supper long ready, so I stepped
over there and said to Daddy and you boys in a smart-alecky voice, ‘Maybe it would
help if you turned that thing right side up.’
“And then suddenly I noticed the ‘Remington’ insignia on the
side wall. It was upside
down. haha”
Time out, the alarm I set on my computer is telling me that the
washing machine is done. I chose an
audio clip of bombs whistling down and exploding. Yep, it definitely got my attention.
I’m washing Loren’s clothes at the moment; ours are
done. When I collected his laundry, he
thanked me, and informed me he’d never washed clothes before, except by hand. He’s forgotten that he did it all the time
after Janice passed away – but he was scared to death to use the dryer, for
some unknown reason. I think Janice
instilled the fear of God into him on certain things that she did not want
him to do. 😂 But I’m only surmising.
Back then, he hung clothes outside when the weather was good. The clothesline is way back by his, uh, what’s
a garage called that’s not connected to the house? Not departed... not dissected... not
separated...
OH! – detached! His
detached garage. (As Hannah says, “Sometimes
my thesaurus gets slapped shut somehow.”)
The garage is some distance from the house; he (and Janice,
when she was alive) had to haul clothes all that way, to hang them. When the weather was bad, he hung things all
over inside the house. I figured, Well,
it’s getting done, and didn’t worry about it.
But he no longer knows how to run the washing machine. He’d probably forget to put detergent in...
get it on the wrong setting... forget to take the clothes out when they were
done... and hauling wet, heavy clothes out to the clothesline would be too much
for him. Much better for me just to do
his laundry.
...
...
...
Okay, I’m baaaaack.
Did you miss me?
These pictures were taken on a fishing excursion to a small
lake south of Monroe. The top picture is
of Hannah fishing – and look, Aleutia has sprawled in the only shade she could
find – Hannah’s shadow. In the next
picture is Larry, Lydia (behind Caleb), Caleb, Hannah (helping Lydia down the
sandy bank), Hester, and Dorcas. And
here’s Caleb, 2 ½, patiently fishing away.
You can tell by the slack line that his bobber is drifting ever
closer. Caleb is unconcerned. He’s holding a fishing pole – and look how
carefully he’s doing it, too – and that’s all that matters.
Here
are some of the flowers I had in my garden in 1996: Sweet William, columbine, and orchid
iris. I used to go for as many unique
perennials as I could find (and afford). I especially liked ordering from Spring
Hill Nursery,
and, particularly for strawberries and tomatoes, Gurney’s.
Saturday, I finished
the laundry and did some housecleaning. Some things only got a lick and a
promise, but that would have to do. I washed dishes, vacuumed, swept, and
dusted (sorta). I put drops of frankincense into the diffuser and turned
it on. Soon the house smelled sooo good.
I used Mrs.
Meyer’s lavender cleaner on the table, and Hawaiian Citrus carpet fresh (not
too much, pôr fąvör!) on the rugs. Yep, the house smelled good!
Satisfied with
that effort, I trotted upstairs to my little office and began scanning an album
from 1997.
Tiger kitty marched
in and squalled at me at the top of his voice.
And he has a big voice! He’s got a heavy-duty pair
of lungs, with the big, broad chest to prove it. I squalled back, he
retorted in a bit quieter tone, and I replied likewise. So we carried on
this conversation for a few minutes. I’m
fairly well-versed in Cattese, but I’m not real sure what the topic of
conversation was, that day. Usually when
he voices such a loud and adamant complaint, he’s protesting the weather, rain
or snow in particular, and requesting that I go turn it off. But Saturday
it was bright and sunny, and a refreshing 70°. The kitty was fed,
watered, petted, and conversed with, and I think I carried on my end of the
discussion well enough that he was fooled into believing I knew what we were
talking about. So, with his characteristic deep-pitched, rumbling purr
going on strongly, he ambled off to his bed (thick eggcrate foam covered in
minky), curled up, and went to sleep.
A book arrived
that I ordered last week – Patches of Scraps, by Edyta Sitar. Wonder of wonders, the mail lady actually
tossed the envelope onto the top of our porch instead of trying to fold it and
cram it in our mailbox over on the old highway.
If you knew how
many lovely books she’s ruined... And
yes, I have placed formal complaints at the post office, usually to no avail.
I love the
Flower Box quilt on the cover. I drew up something similar in EQ8, but
mine wasn’t as nice as Edyta’s. I like
her, and I like her patterns and fabrics, and decided to give her my business
instead of making something inferior.
That afternoon,
I ordered 18 32GB flash drives with both USB and micro USB plugins. These
will be only for Norma’s old family photos, and I’ll give them to our children
and Larry’s brother and his children and Larry’s sister. So at least our
kids will get some old pictures for Christmas. 1,262, to be exact. I have now scanned
a total of 20,830 photos, including Norma’s.
When I’m done, I’ll put all of these scanned photos, plus all of my more
recent digital photos, onto one- or two-terabyte flash drives with multiple
ports, so they’ll be compatible with any electronic devices. And that’ll be our children’s 2022 Christmas
gifts (if I get done in time).
I hope they’ll
be pleased to have them! The photos are all labeled... they’re in dated
folders corresponding with the albums... In a matter of seconds, a search
function can find every picture of any individual or location. The photos
I took myself go back to about 1968, when I was given my first little camera (and
it was bright red!!). But there are also old family photos that date back
to the late 1800s. I figure if I get flash drives that hold plenty of
data, I can ‘recall’ them each December and add the year’s pictures to
them. Maybe I should stipulate in my will that someone take charge of
doing that, and also that they put all those pictures on any new type of device
that comes out, so they don’t eventually become irretrievable?
(No, I won’t
say anything like that in a will; I don’t want my offspring to dislike me after
I’m gone! I’ll just hope one of
the descendants cares about these things. And if not... oh, well. Life will go on, even if Baby Eva doesn’t
have access to a picture of her Great-Great-Great-Grandmother Addie Melissa.)
Kim Komando, the
‘Digital Goddess’, insists that all photos should be printed. On paper. Good grief! Can you imagine the cost of
printing all my photos?! And then what if I printed them all for each of
the kids?!! Aiiiyiiiieeee.
I’d think she,
of all people, would have better recommendations than that. Such
as, “Keep everything backed up on stable platforms and devices at least thrice,
and move all data to newer technologies when yours starts getting obsolete.”
Here are Asiatic lilies, blue-fringed daisies, and gaillardia, aka Indian Blanket.
Looking at my
old pictures, I saw one of Hester as a newborn, and remembered how we could not
get used to calling our little Hester by that name – my mother’s name – for
a few weeks; it seemed so disrespectful! And then one day when she was
about three weeks old, I said, “Baby ‘this or that, blah blah’ ----” ... and I
saw Baby turn her head toward me and beam happily. I thought, Oh my
goodness, she thinks her name is ‘Baby’!
I immediately
began calling her ‘Hester’ at every conceivable opportunity, starting with ‘Baby
Hester’ so she’d understand. It wasn’t more than two days before
she was beaming at me when I said ‘Hester’.
Whew.
Identity crisis averted. 😂
I told this
story to a quilting friend, and she said, “Yes, I can understand how that just
seemed wrong to be calling your mother by her first name. Glad you didn’t screw up the kid for
life. At three weeks, she had time to heal. 😊” haha
Here are
pansies (the ‘flower with a face’, my mother used to say), and butterfly
flowers.
And this is
Keith riding Dulcy, our little paint pony, in autumn of 1988. Fleta, the big palomino, is in the
background. Larry’s auto-rebuilding shop
was going up over there on the left. Next is Dorcas on Dulcy, with Larry leading the pony, and after that are shots of Teddy and
Joseph on the pony.
I was going
strong on the photo-scanning when Loren called.
It was 6:22 p.m.; I would later learn from Larry that Loren had called
him five minutes earlier, looking for ‘Norma June’, and wanting Larry to tell
him where she worked. He wouldn’t listen
to Larry telling him his mother had passed away, she had not worked, there is
no other ‘Norma’, and no, it isn’t his grandmother, who would be well over 100
years old.
“I’ll just have
to call someone else!” he said, when Larry provided no satisfaction.
He called me
immediately after talking with Larry.
The story had changed considerably in those few minutes. “‘Norma June’ dropped me off here this morning,
and I haven’t seen her since! I don’t know
where she is, and I don’t know what to do, or where I should spend the night.”
“Where are
you?” I asked, just to make him think about it.
I knew where he was.
“I’m at this house
across from the park,” he said.
“That’s your own
house!” I told him.
He paused a
moment, then said indignantly, “I know that!”
Most of the
time when he’s that mixed up, he’s been sleeping, which is what I suspect was
the case Saturday. He often goes to bed
quite early. Maybe he dreams, wakes up,
and thinks it’s real. But sometimes he’s
been awake, and has hallucinations.
“I don’t know
why Norma hasn’t come back to pick me up!” he said.
“Norma has
passed away,” I started.
“No,” he interrupted,
agitated. “I’m not talking about her;
I’m talking about that other one!”
“There is no
‘other Norma’,” I told him. “Norma, who
was your wife, and Larry’s mother, has passed away.”
“I’m talking
about Larry’s grandmother!” he exclaimed. “The one who dropped me off here, early this
morning!”
He was done
talking with me, when I said that this was impossible, because Larry’s
grandmother died years ago, and Larry’s mother Norma passed away last year, and
that’s the only Norma there was.
Loren finally said,
“Well, I’ll talk to you another time; I just wanted to let you know where I
was.”
I said, “Okay,”
and then he asked, “Do you know where I’m talking about?”
“Yes,” I replied,
“you’re at your very own house!”
He laughed, thought
about it, and then agreed, “Yes, it’s my house.”
“Well, that’s a
pretty good place to sleep,” I told him, and he somewhat impatiently said he knew
that, though half a minute earlier, he’d said he didn’t know where he
should sleep.
“I’m just going
to have to call someone else,” he said, and told me goodbye.
He thinks he
has several houses. He gets
mixed up with the house where he used to live in Solon, Iowa, and sometimes
even with places he and Janice stayed in their campers when he was working, I
think. Since it never
helped when I said I didn’t know who he was talking about – ‘Norma June’ (he’s
said that ever since reading the obituary the day of her funeral) – and seemed
to reinforce his notion that there is indeed ‘another Norma’, I’ve changed to
saying this (whatever it is he’s saying) could not have happened. Impossible.
There is no other ‘Norma’. No,
no, and no. He doesn’t like
it, but he quits saying it, usually. He
can’t think of words he needs – and I can think of plenty of words, so... I
win. 😏
These things
often change, after a little time. When
they do, I try to change, too, and do whatever works best at the moment. We do whatever we can to keep him from
traipsing off to hunt for Norma. Doesn’t
always work.
These are
Alpine golden bells, foxglove, and a Dianne carnation that were in my 1996
garden.
At 20 ’til 7, I
got a movement alert from SpotTrace.
Loren was driving somewhere. Nineteen
minutes later, he was home again, having made a big circle west on the bypass,
south and then east through town, and back north to his house. Maybe he went looking for ‘Norma June’...
maybe he went to see Robert or Lura Kay and forgot to stop when he went past
their houses... who knows. It would do
absolutely no good to ask him; he’d just come up with some fantastical,
nonsensical story.
Thankfully, he
still drives well. I realize that
probably won’t last. We’ll cross that
bridge when we get to it.
As has been
happening more and more often, when we walked into church yesterday morning
Loren was sitting almost in Larry’s place, and there wasn’t enough room for
Larry and me between Loren and the young lady who generally sits on the other
side of me.
Larry
squiiiiisshhed into the pew (I refuse to squish Michelle), and asked Loren to
move down. He sat, looking bewildered,
because his Bible and Bible case (separated; he’d taken the Bible out of the
case and laid them down side by side) were in the spot he himself should’ve
been sitting in, and he had no idea what to do about it. Larry gestured at the songbook rack, telling
him he could put both the case and the Bible in the rack. Finally, Loren did so, and scooted over. A little bit. Not enough, really, but at least we could
breathe again. There’s enough space on
the other side of Loren for another person to sit. Maybe he’s saving it for ‘Norma June’?
He keeps
sitting farther and farther from the end of the pew. Larry has several times asked him to move
down a bit... but Larry’s one of those good guys who doesn’t like to do stuff
like that. One day when I was talking
with one of the ushers, I asked, “Do you think you could maybe put up some
yellow police crime tape where Loren should stop and sit down?” 🤣
Then, “Kidding,
kidding. We’ll cope with it. I’ll just go on elbowing Larry until he does
something about it.” 😂
The usher, a
good friend of ours, agreed, “Sometimes it would be good to have some of that
yellow tape.” 😊
After church,
we went to the one and only station in Columbus that (finally) sells E-85,
filled the Jeep, and bought grapes, Bai Antioxidant Infusion in Brasilia
Blueberry flavor, and a cinnamon-almond muffin for Loren. Then, on our way to his house, we stopped at
KFC and got him one of their ‘Famous Bowls’, which is a stew-like concoction of
popcorn chicken, mashed potatoes, sweet corn, gravy, and three different
cheeses. He likes it, and it’s not too
bad, healthwise, and it saves us from having to go all the way home, cook
something, and then take it back to Loren’s house.
Today a quilt
arrived from the lady in Phoenix. I’ll
start quilting it tomorrow.
Out in the Nebraska Panhandle,
it’s been really dry, and they’ve been fighting wildfires, two large ones in
particular. One day last week, firefighters
announced that they had two big fires under control, over 50% contained. The very next day, wind gusts increased and
humidity dropped, and they wound up having to evacuate people near Gering,
Nebraska. But the firefighters redoubled
their efforts, and the fires are now nearly 100% contained.
Yesterday
and today it’s been hot – 95° yesterday, and 92° today.
And now here’s Caleb, 2 ½, on July 26, 1996, helping carry
camping stuff back to the pickup. Why do
little boys so often grab something that’s entirely too heavy for them? In picture #2, he’s saying, “Heeeaavy!” Shortly after I took picture #3, he said,
“Ooooof!” – and gladly let one of his bigger siblings take that big Thermos.
Bedtime!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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