STATE OF THE NATION

I've been asked..why not write more about Canada, the Canadian scene, the political situation, interaction with our people, that sort of subject subject. Pollution, ownership of our resources, industry,oilsands - fertilizer concerns and related topics need looking at I am told.
Explore and write about this they tell me, rather than question the Americans or America. Oh well.
I promise to try a bit of this, Canada from the inside...instead of looking outside the country at the USA and other parts of the world.

Politics
Frankly, our political situation at the moment is extremely weird to say the least. The PC's ( Progressive Conservative federal party) have a majority and for the foreseeable future ( 4 years until a new election is legally required) they are in charge of the country.Separation by Quebec appears to be not much of an effort by the folks of that wonderful province, during the last election they pretty well blew away the previously popular separation party The Bloc, and elected a group of NDP members making the NDP the official opposition.

The once mighty and powerful Liberal party is reduced to 3rd. party status although listening to their current temporary leader ( ex NDP Bob Ray...after a 10 year break) you would never know it.
Imagine, the NDP, being the official opposition. Their wonderful and unbelievable energetic leader Jack Leyton died of cancer shortly after being elected and the is presently operating without a new person to lead the opposition charges.

writing

Writing...writer J.Grisham

I am really not all that talented when it comes to writing stuff..I read a lot and occasionally I like to comment on some of what I manage to take in. I can be quite critical if the writing does not make much sense or is hastily put together or inaccurate.
Recently I have enjoyed reading most of the books by John Grisham, an American novel writer. Generally I do not read much fiction, but J.Grisham's Lawyer stories are to a large extend based on true happenings and contain a lot of social and cultural facts.
Pollution, racial tensions, exploitation of certain regions,tort lawyers and their dirty tricks, big tobacco, the chemical industry, drug cartels, international oil companies are some of his subject matter.
They all become targets of finely spun yarn by this great writer.

bugs,computer crap,now read these tips

FREE TOOLS TO REMOVE MALICIOUS COMPUTER MALWARE...

Takeaway: Fighting the malware battle really hurts when you’re spending a good deal of your IT budget (if you even have an IT budget) on software to protect machines from attacks. Here’s how to do it for free.

Malicious software (be they viruses, rootkits, trojans, worms, or malware) are so prevalent it seems one of the primary jobs for IT is the protecting, cleaning, and removing of said software. It seems no matter how hard you try, or how much you pay for the software you use to protect your desktops, it always seems like a losing battle. Fighting that losing battle really hurts when you are spending a good deal of your IT budget (if you even have an IT budget) on software to protect machines from attacks.
It doesn’t have to be that way. I have found plenty of tools that can help in the quest to have a virus/malware-free environment. These tools can be either installed on your machines or used as a toolkit to carry with you to fight the good fight. You won’t find enterprise-grade tools here. What you will find are tools I have found to do the best job at keeping my systems clean.

Combofix

Combofix is my first line of defense tool when I suspect something has taken over a machine. But you shouldn’t just run this powerful tool without a few considerations. First, and foremost, what will Combofix fix? After a successful run of Combofix, you should have cleaned (if applicable): Malware, Rootkits, Trojans, Worms, and Viruses. What you need to know about Combofix, prior to running is quite important. The single most important issue with Combofix is that you can not run it with an antivirus tool enabled. With some antivirus solutions you can simple disable the tool (Symantec Endpoint Protection is a perfect example). One particular antivirus solution, AVG, I have found to require complete removal before running Combofix. And to be on the safe side, I prefer to run Combofix with the computer in safe mode. One other note: Never download Combofix from any other site than Bleeping Computer or ForoSpyware.

CCleaner

Antoher free tool, CCleaner does two things incredibly well: Cleans the Windows registry and removes cached web data. There are a lot of registry cleaners available, but CCleaner is the one I always trust. As with any tool, you want to make sure you understand the tool before using. And although cleaning cached browser data is fairly harmless, cleaning the registry is not. I highly recommend always doing a backup of the registry when using CCleaner to take care of this task. Fortunately CCleaner has a built-in tool for backing up said registry.

Microsoft Security Essentials

After using so many different anti-virus tools, the one tool that seems to work nearly as well as any other, without any attached cost, is Microsoft Security Essentials. Not only will this anti-virus tool work well to help prevent infection, it does so with as little drain on the system as nearly any anti-virus tool.

Malwarebytes

People are always surprised to find out they need anti-spyware as well as anti-virus protection. Of the anti-malware tools I have used, Malwarebytes seems to be the most effective. Now there are two different versions of Malwarebytes: Free and Paid. The biggest difference is the Paid version has a real-time scanner built in. The free version must be run manually. This is not a problem if you are in control of all the PC scanning, or you can trust your users to manually run the software nightly (as well as manually update the definitions often.) If you can not trust your users to run this piece of software, you might need to buckle down and drop the $24.95 for the licensed version.

Clonezilla

Clonezilla is a Free Open Source Software (FOSS) that allows you to do bare metal backups and recoveries. There are two different versions available: Clonezilla Live or Clonezilla SE (Server Edition). As the name implies, Clonezilla Live is a small, bootable live Linux distribution that allows you to clone to do a single clone at a time. The Server Edition requires a DRBL server and allows you to do massive cloning. With the Server Edition you can do large, simultaneous restores quickly (instead of a single clone at a time.) Regardless of which tool you use, Clonezilla is a very reliable tool for bare metal backups and restores.

Hamachi

Although not a tool that will help you clean up your systems, Hamachi will allow you to add machines to a VPN without having the associated costs of a typical VPN. I have already covered this tool in my OpenSource post “Use Hamachi VPN on your Linux clients,” so I will let you use that as a basis for installation and use. If you’re curious how this can be used as an admin tool - you can always house your toolkit on a machine connected to Hamachi VPN and then access those tools from anywhere (so long as you can add Hamachi to the machine in question.)

Final thoughts

There are so many pieces of software available for the DIY user, which only means more trouble in discerning which ones are worth using. Hopefully the list above will help you narrow down the tools you need to keep around in your DIY toolkit.

nice town... but....

we've got to get something going in this place. Nice town, but, not only has time stood still for a while, things are actually stuck in some ways. Sure, we have a few new additions in the big box area of town near the 401 but these are more of a regional area than town. A new booze outlet is in the works at the mall even less need in the future to buy your spirits in town and look around a bit.

and so...

 

 

I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn’t have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn’t make for an interesting person. I didn’t want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.

— Charles Bukowski

Power of Will

Author Frank Haddock -1915.  this is a comment copied from comments on  the writers book:

I've only read about 120 pages so far, but this is one book I have a hard time putting down. As with most books I've read which were written around this time, Power of Will uses a lot of theatrics. I assume writers wrote in a much more descriptive fashion before the days of modern media. The first chapter seemed a little deep, but as I read on it seemed easier to assimilate. I can't tell you exactly why, but old books such as this seem to draw me in. The point of the book is: By gaining self-discipline (will-power) anything we want to accomplish will be much more possible and probable. I would compare this book with Law of Success (Napoleon Hill), Pushing to the Front (Orrison Swett Marden)and, The Master Key System (Charles F. Haanel). As I've said, read this book!

F.C.Haddock; American Writer

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Frank Channing Haddock was born November 17th, 1853 in Watertown, New York of the well known Methodist preacher George C. Haddock and the former Cornelia B. Herrick. He graduated from St. Lawrence University in 1876 (with “high rank” and as the class poet), and entered the Methodist ministry but left that to take up law, being admitted to the bar in 1881, practiced in Milwaukee and was a well known legal writer. In 1887, he returned to the ministry (after his father’s assassination for temperance work), preaching in Iowa, Ohio and Massachusetts. He then retired from the ministry to take up writing again where he became a famous author and lecturer on ethics, philosophy, spirituality and empowerment.

His primary work is captured in the Power-Book Library comprised of the "Power of Will," "Power for Success," "The Personal Atmosphere," "Business Power," "The Culture of Courage," "Practical Psychology" and "Creative Personality". He died in Merriden, Conn on February 9th, 1915 of meningitis while completing his last work, the “Creative Personality.”