Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

I haven't done a "That Was The Weekend That Was" post in a while. Here goes.

Fri 4/22: Didn't accomplish much of anything. Had breakfast at Roxx Coffee House. Had dinner with the Usual Suspects at Bullwinkle's in Middletown.

Sat 4/23: Headed off to Danville, IN for a housefilk hosted by bedlamhouse and ladyat. Guests included quadrivium, tollers, tigertoy, and birder2. Also attended a concert by The Berrymans at the UU Community Church of Hendricks County. Had a great time.

Sun 4/24: Drove back in time for UU churchy goodness. Played a bass clarinet duet with Sylvia. Went swimming with M at the local rec center. She freaked at the rainy weather and forgetting to bring her Powerpuff Girls DVD. Called Mom.

Earlier this afternoon, I was working on my neighbor's removable hard drive. He couldn't get it to mount on his system. But it mounted fine on my system. I was able to see the files.

At around 5:30pm, it appears that several spam messages were sent from my account to everyone in my address book. The message contained a weblink with no explanation, and my signature.

I have since concluded that one of the following three scenarios happened: 1) My Gmail account was compromised and someone sent messages from it. 2) I've been spoofed. 3) I picked up a Trojan Horse virus just by mounting my neighbor's hard drive.

I have since changed my account password and am running both an AVG scan and an Ad-Aware scan on my system to scrub it down. I'm also considering MalwareBytes and SuperAntiSpyware scans as well. In the meantime, delete the message that was sent by me at around 5:30pm, or ignore the posted link in the message.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

Via ladyoceanstar: One disabled woman's account on flying United from Seattle to San Francisco.

And people wonder why I hate flying.

I spent the last week in Buffalo, NY visiting my mother. (As a rule, for security reasons, I don't publicize my trips in advance on LJ, FB, or any other social media. I don't even talk about traveling while I'm away.)

A couple of weeks ago, I received a message from my sister in Colorado that my mom's home health care aides noted that my mom was eating less than usual, and asked me to check it out. Mom was eating her usual amounts the week I was there.

( The daily breakdown, as I remember it. )

...because I didn't go this past weekend. If you want to know why I choose to continue my personal boycott of this con, this is my story and I'm sticking to it.

Instead, I had dinner with Deb on Friday night. On Saturday, I went to the Installfest+ held by the Linux SIG of the DMA, a local computer user group. I didn't get my laptop modem problems resolved, but I learned about firewall and anti-virus programs that I can use on Ubuntu. That night, I chaperoned several young teens who were having a sleepover at my church. On Sunday, M and I went to the Newport Aquarium, and spent way too much money. Last night, I watched C-SPAN while they were debating the health care bill.

I thought about writing a long essay here about why I'm neither Republican nor conservative. But I think I'll reduce it to a few bullet points.

* I grew up in a union household. Dad was a member of the UAW.
* I have friends and allies of many faiths -- Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Sikh, pagan, atheist.
* I married (and divorced) a Wiccan.
* I value diversity over conformity.

In the end, I don't think I need to defend or justify my political position or opinion to anyone. If they don't like it, screw 'em. Real friends accept me as I am.

One of the side projects I've been doing this past week is to upgrade a colleague's PC.

Julie is the office manager where I do my volunteer work. She had an older system running Windows 98 SE, and another friend recently gave her a DVD burner, which she wanted to use in this system. The problem is, Windows 98 doesn't know about DVD burners. So this started a chain reaction of upgrades.

( The story so far. )

A representative for Time Warner Cable called me today. (Actually, they've been calling me for a month, but I wasn't around to pick up the phone when they called.) They wanted to sell me digital phone for $20/month.

They seemed so confident that I was going to switch. But I said no. And then they persisted: "I understand your resistance.....". What makes them think they're going to persuade me? (I know, it's in their script.) I had to think of something fast. Something that conveys, "No, no, hell no!" I thought, "Tell them I work for their competitor, or own stock in the phone company I have, and that switching over would create a conflict of interest." So I did. And it worked. I should have added, "Put me on your do not call list", but they were off the phone by then.

Don't people understand that if I want something, I'll go ahead and pursue it myself? I don't need people slamming me, trying to slam me, or verbally twisting my arm to buy their product. I hate that.

I often don't agree with what Fox News says, but this article has me agreeing with them. Hasbro had a pink Ouija board that was marketed toward teenage girls. Thankfully, it's being phased out.

I really don't believe this product -- or any other type of Ouija board -- should be marketed to anyone who isn't a serious practitioner of the occult. It's not "just a toy". There's too much potential for psychic and/or psychological damage.

( In the summer of 1985, I was witness to a bad Ouija board experience. )

One of the things I've wanted to do with my computer is to use it to digitize my record and tape collection, and convert them to audio CDs.

Last week, I picked up the Honestech Audio Recorder 2.0 at Big Lots. It's a package which contains adapter cables and software to perform audio capture and editing. Overall, the package is inexpensive and easy to use. It doesn't have any special settings to remove tape hiss or record scratches, though. And I had a hard time figuring out how to break up the audio stream into tracks.

So far, I've digitized two albums that I had previously recorded to cassette tape. One was a tape of the Caroleers' "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town", a Christmas album I've had since I was in kindergarten. The other was a tape of Billy Joel's first solo album, "Cold Spring Harbor", that I obtained from a friend in high school. This 1971 release has notoriety because it was mastered at a speed slightly slower than normal, resulting in Billy's voice sounding higher than natural. The album was re-released in 1983, but the orchestral tracks were removed.

One thing I've discovered is that the source has to be high-quality to have a CD-quality result. Cold Spring Harbor was recorded on one side of a TDK D C-90 tape nearly 30 years ago, and whatever high range it had has been lost. As a result, the final product sounds a bit muddy. I'd very much like to get my own copy of the original 1971 album and re-digitize it, if I can find a copy. I think I saw a copy on EBay for $40.