Posts

Hope These Comes Through

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So, I bought the new Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra to replace my S22 Ultra with the broken charging port. Luckily at&t had a trade-in program that made this extremely inexpensive for me.  I was recently watching a YouTube video on camera features trying ro figure out if there are any settings or features I should be using and discovered something I had seen while playing with the phone but didn't really pay attention to while poking around. Specifically, that the camera on this device (which I'm typing on now) can take photos at 12M, 50M or 200 M. That's two-hundred megapixels! So, I've been playing with this feature just to see how much detail I can extract from an image. From what I've looked at, 200M on my phone is still not as detail laden as the 15M on my Pentax K5 (yes, it's old). But, that's digital vs optical for you.  Here are to images I took today with the 200M setting. I was walking my brother's dog on a 6 mile loop I found and we were on the

Just Testing Something

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Since my previous post had the photo insert upside down, I wanted to check and see if it happened to all photos or just that one. Dexter, my brother's dog, while we were out for a walk on Dead River Park, Hillsborough County, FL. 

Haunted Guinea Pig

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My mom is visiting her sister just outside of St. Louis. My aunt has Stage IV lung cancer and is going through intense chemo.  This is while I'm in Florida visiting family and staying at my mom's house (taking care of her cat, watering plants etc.).  She called about an hour ago and asked me to find a certain pair of shoes my brother can bring to her while his family goes up this weekend to visit my aunt. I went up to see my aunt previously. While on the phone my mom mentioned she was tired of sleeping on the couch. My aunt no longer able to use the stairs, isn't using her master bedroom on the second floor, leaving it empty. I asked my mom why she didn't just use the bedroom upstairs and she replied that she didn't get good feelings from that room - that she's sensitive to the paranormal and the room scares her. It always has. My aunt moved I to this house which was built in the 1940s, in 1974, and had lived there ever since. I remember going ip there once whe

On Proselytizing in Random YouTube Comments

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This doesn't just apply to YouTube, but any online location where people pop in with their religious Ness for no reason other than to shove their religion down everyone's throats. Most of the time we just ignore these people, but I'm tired of that, just as I'm tired of the MAGAmorons and other alt-right imbeciles glorifying their ignorance.  We have to push back, let these people know their 240 character sermons aren't welcome in polite society. 

GOP ... or KKK? Or both?

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Apparently a local GOP group in Alabama posted KKK inagery on their Facebook page recently. When called out they apologized , but let's face it, both the Republican Party and Alabama are stereotyped for their racism and stereotypes exist for a reason. So ... was it unintentional or were they just not expecting the backlash? Image they shared:

Forced Compliance, a Service by Google

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 Let me start by saying 2-factor authorization is a good idea. In fact, it's a great idea for security, especially if your computer or password is compromised. That being said, Google recently announced that it would automatically enroll everyone into 2-factor authorization, whether they want to be or not.  Now, I understand Google probably has metrics on the back end showing how many accounts are compromised and how often, but to auto-enroll people into a program they may not even understand isn't the way to make things safer overall.  Education is the best way to make the internet and e/Gmail accounts more secure. Strong passwords, not using the same password in multiple locations, using a VPN when out and about, etc. Forcing people - people like my mom or someone who only has a Gmail account because they have an Android phone - to use a service that requires their phone be by their side at all times does a disservice to everyone - everyone except Google themselves. What do I

Strong Face

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8 months ago Don't worry, I'm not going to post a picture of my mug on here, but I wanted to tell this story because it caught me off guard and that so rarely happens.  This morning at the gym, I was relaxing in the hot tub, letting the hot (okay, warm) water relax my muscles after a moderately intensive workout. Sometimes I enjoy a light workout, sometimes a very intense once, but this morning I just wasn't feeling it, so I met somewhere in the middle, which is far more often than I want to admit out loud.  I was sitting in the corner, like I always do, watching a YouTube on the origins of Hallowe'en  (some of which I disagree with on technical aspects and some of which I found thought provoking) when a younger woman enters the hot tub. I hadn't seen her at the gym before and definitely hadn't seen her in the hot tub before this morning, so I thought perhaps she was new to this particular gym. I said, "Hi," and she took the corner across from me, abou