Web Blah Garza

A couple of days ago I was attacked by a nasty RogueWare called AV Security Suite. There was some indication that it entered through the port I had open for XFire. I have closed that port and left it that way. It was on my main system that still runs XP, it got through some of my best protection. Fortunately I knew what happened the minute it did. I immediately shut my internet connection off when I realized it was trying to get out. I couldn’t get to anything, it shut off all my access to system tools and spy/virus wares. Got my lap top out and searched for information once I found it I took action. First thing I did was go in under safe mode to search out any registry stuff, decided to do a system restore, I could only get to it in safe mode, went back a month and restored. I then was able to access my real system tools and immediatly updated my SuperAntiSpyware then ran a full system scan. It found 42 spywares 21 flash spys, and two trojans. Cleaned them out, rebooted and did another registry scan, I found no trace of the rogue. Then I did a full virus ware scan, clean, So far so good, I’m now in the process of reinstalling the most recent stuff I did, IE… new CEP for NWN and the newest games I installed. I’ll know for sure how things went after being online for a while. I highly suggest you double check your systems every day for this stuff. Every site where I found information about these rogues ( there are about six or seven variations) say the same thing. These things need no sites or even active interaction with them to find and destroy your system. This has to be the worst thing I’ve ever seen so far and I’ve had to rebuld several computers over the years because of trojans and viruses. If you get hit remember first thing to do is shut off your internet access. If they get to the parent site it’s all over, you are set up for extortion the only thing these things do is get you to a site where you are extorted for money (read this article)!! This is no game!!!It’s sudden death for your system. I highly recommend you read every site that has informaiton about these things. So far SuperAntiSpyware (I highly recommend it) and a few other wares are effective in removing them but with a lot of hassle. Nothing seems to prevent them from intruding. I hope no one gets hit but if you do don’t think just act fast!!!

I want to start with saying in the past couple of years, it has been great reconnecting with old friends and making new ones on the social sites that I’m on. Now let me get on with the gist of this post. Over the years I have done many things in many areas of life, I have always been somewhat of a political activist ever since the Viet Nam war and have a very strong opinion about injustice and carelesness. For the most part I’ve always kept my personal life and politics apart as much as possible. With the advent of social sites, I have walked a careful path and occasionally voiced an opinion here and ther but recently the events of our world and the advent of many natural and man made disasters has brought out much of my strong feelings against injustice. We as a people, I think, like to find happiness and frolic in the flowers so to speak, but with the state of the world as it is I personally find that difficult. So my feelings have been more blatant and outspoken. and it is reflected on my social site profiles.

Soo, what are social sites for? The reconnecting of old friends, the voicing of opinons, the promoting of our buisness’s and art, music etc… As friends come and go and I become more myself on these sites I find that many people just don’t want to hear it or know about the truth. Are we destined to play among the daisies and frolic in the flowers of socil sites, as our world collapses around us?? I for one look to the future for my children, I want a better world for them and in that I know that it’s up to me to make one. If I can’t fight the good fight for justice and truth, then in my world I fail them. If I sit back and watch the greedy destroy our planet and maintain a system of poor and rich, then I fail the world. If I can’t point out the ludicrous behaviour of my fellow humans who tend to lead us astray from a good life then I fail my self.

Social sites are wonderful things and the internet is a treasure trove of information. Sharing that info is something I love to do. Yes much like the TV you can’t believe everything you see on the internet, but common sense and a little research can always prevail.

I will continue to voice my feelings and share my opinion. people may not always agree with it, but that’s the beauty of our freedom. If we let that be taken away out of fear, in other words what someone else may think or the policing of the internet then we have failed our country and the world. Don’t let the illusion of the internet or social sites water down who you really are, my friends are who they are and no matter what you may believe or think, what we have shared and what we can share will always be first and foremost. Life is not a social site, and social sites are not life, what I share on them is my life and being able to see the lives of others I have known over the years is a wonderful thing.

The Spill in the Gulf Of Mexico is a wake up call. The worlds love affaire with HydroCarbons needs to end! Our dependence on the cumbustion engine is arcane and antiquated, all based on two industries that have taken us by the nads and squeezed every penny they can get to make themselves multibillion dollar corporations. Now we have bailed out the auto industry on one hand and have been lied to and royaly screwed by the other side of the coin, the oil industry! Isn’t it enough, have we come so far only to be so blind! I grew up in an oil family with a grandfather who worked for Exxon’s refinery for 49 years. He never drove to work, in all those years rain or shine, he rode a bicycle. I remember cars that would run on anything but water disappearing on the shelf of the Oil industry never to be seen again, because of greedy oil men, those who doubt this, I actually saw the car in a news story in the early 60’s on television it was a lengthy story on a science show . It’s time, who will stand up and once and for all demand change!! The era of an economy doomed to fail based on hydrocarbons is at an end. We must accept it’s fate and move on to better things!

Over 3500 oil rigs in the Gulf, yet no one asks, “why is the price of gas so high?” Don’t let them tell you there is no other way or that nothing better exists. They have lied for years, and they will lie again. There’s talk about skimming the oil from the surface with super tankers, this from an executive from Shell Oil, yet they fail to tell you that what’s on the surface is a small portion of the oil, because of the highly toxic dispersent that has been banned in other places in the world for ten years that they’ve used. The real problem is under the water and it’s growing bigger than what we see on top!

Yet, that’s how it always is in deception. It’s not what’s on top you have to worry about, it’s the underlying implications that we never see till it’s too late! That has been the nature of the Oil industry and the Auto industry. What was good for General Motors was absoulutely not good for America, and a tiger in your tank will only eat you alive!

Spring has come on but has been slow to move in here in the Southern Rockies. We have had several baby goats and lost a few, It was a hard winter for the livestock, very cold very snowy and not much relief from the onsluaght of the weather. It was hard to lose a couple of babies but such is the life in the world of birth and death. We got rid of our sheep the other day, sad to see them go but it will be easier to focus on our yaks.

I’ve been in to taking photographs lately and sprung for a new camera, you can check out my gallery HERE. I’m not in to any single type of photography just what ever catches my eye and fancy. I can’t say I’m a phtographer but I aspire to acieve an art as always.

I have to admit this has been an incredibly intense spring. Several major earthquakes, a large volcanoe (more to come I’m sure), an unprecedented oil catastrophe and killer weather in diverse places. One could almost say it all seems quite apocalyptic. Of course the use of the word has been bent out of proportion as the true greek translation of the word means “to reveal hidden information”. Coincidence that the movie 2012 and the events of late seem to beckon to an almost true to life scenario of end times? Where is this all leading and if there is a revealing about to occur what will it be? One can only speculate and wonder, that is if one really cares.

My focus lately has been more on my family and the work needed to be done in the more immediate thing called my life. It seems the only thing that brings me joy are the small things, and my children. It seems a night doesn’t go by when I look up at the sky and take in the vast curtain of clouds or the bright vail of stars. I always feel so big feeling so small, and I try to take in the all. My life is full of hard work and feeling tired but I feel these things with a relish of satisfaction that I’m not wasting my life not thinking or not feeling.

It’s hard to say which direction things will go but I get the feeling it can’t be good. We are staring down the barrel of a galactic gun. I get the feeling we are under a universal microscope in some ones heavenly laboratory being watched and studied.

I’m sorry if I sound so morose, I do feel quite happy with life, and the things I know are more meaningful than the doom and gloom of it all. I know that these trials and tribuilations are necessary to reach the other side, the outcome. I think there is a good place for us all that can, and will survive what lies ahead.

On my way home today, I was sitting at a light watching two large birds flying around each other and half fighting, as they got closer one of them turned sidways so the light caught it’s tail and it was white. What I had been watching were two bald eagles coming closer. As they approached a third came up, the bird that was out front flew off and the two paired up and flew off along the ridge to the south together. It was a spectacular few moments that took me away from my car and the surrounding traffic and hubbub. What made it even more incredible is that it all took place in an area where the balds are rarely seen, much too populated. I looked around and no one had even noticed them. I thought to myslef what a way to end the year, it all seemed like some type of message so I will ponder it into the new year and who knows what it will bring.

May the New Year find you all in excellent health and loved for who you are, as well as your incredible abilities to create what you see and feel!!

Recently I’ve begun to become more nostalgic than usual. Lately I’ve spent a lot of time on Facebook watching and reading the doings of many old friends I have come back in to contact with. Of course the contact is over the cyber reality of the internet and in a way it’s not real contact but, contact none the less. As I have watched and read and interacted, at times many memories and moments that have passed in to the ethers of time have raced through my head and I begin to see, that where I am now and where I was then is so far apart. It begs the question, “Is the me I am now and the me I was then, the same person?”. How do we determine who we are? Do we base it on our actions? On our relationships? On our accomplishments? On our failures. Or perhaps it’s a culmunation of all of these and more.

Many times I have watched people come and go from my life and even though they may be gone, they still dwell in my memories as (perhaps I’m part elephant?) I truly never forget them. I am, as one would say, an older man with different stages of my life here and gone by, I have older children that know a different father than the one I am now to my younger children. Time has a way, for some, to teach us different ways to be and that brings me back to my question. What do we base our changes in life on, time seems to be a huge factor but time is also an illusion we created to measure deteroration of matter and energy.

SO many times I look ahead and see where I want to be and make plans to reach that goal, but I find when I lose sight of them and move with the flow of the universe I become more of what I want to be than when I try to accomplish laid out plans.

I look at my friends so many of them in thier lives living them, and moving through space as gracefully as geese in flight, and all of us joining in this dance of information sharing on facebook. I begin to feel that nostalgia for the ones who aren’t here. Past lovers, deceased friends, people who have disappeared in to lifes fog of time, I begin to wonder where they are and what has, and did happen to them.

Perhaps what I’m feeling is my own misgivings at how I am beginning to change, a few more grey hairs, the pounds that come and go, the hint of double chin and the age appearing in my eye’s as I look in the mirror. The days I have spent in the high desert alone and in the mountains with no one else there but me were less lonely than now with friends and family in reach.

The irony of it all.

I’ve Been waiting to hear someone say this very thing, Finally someone in DC with courage!

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Kucinich: Why Is It We Have Finite Resources for Health Care but Unlimited
Money for War?

WASHINGTON - November 6 - Following a statement on the Floor of the House
of Representative, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the
following statement:

“Why is it we have finite resources for health care but unlimited money for
war?

“The inequities in our economy are piling up: trillions for war, trillions
for Wall Street and tens of billions for the insurance companies. Banks and
other corporations are sitting on piles of cash of taxpayer’s money while
firing workers, cutting pay and denying small businesses money to survive.

“People are losing their homes, their jobs, their health, their
investments, their retirement security; yet there is unlimited money for
war, Wall Street and insurance companies, but very little money for jobs on
Main Street.

“Unlimited money to blow up things in Iraq and Afghanistan, and relatively
little money to build things in the US.

“The Administration may soon bring to Congress a request for an additional
$50 billion for war. I can tell you that a Democratic version of the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan is no more acceptable than a Republican version of
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Trillions for war and Wall Street, billions for insurance companies…
When we were promised change, we weren’t thinking that we give a dollar and
get back two cents.”

Today is full of fall, I picked up my son Athan from school and he is having a play date with a friend named Gweny, short for Gwennivere. It’s strange to see my eight year old son having a great time with a girl who not only looks a little like him but shares so much of the same interests. I’m glad he’s finding friendship with girls at such a young age. It will benifit him later in life to know how to befriend women rather than pursue them.
The wind blew through here yesterday leaving the roof of the chicken coup torn up a little and a few other odds and ends that will need repaire before the winter sets in. We picked up our new young bull Yak, Oscar, this past weekend with a drive to Stemaboat Springs that was arduous yet well needed, as trips go.

After going over the wrong pass and having to go back over it to get back on the right road things smoothed out. The Yampa Valley was as beautifull as I remembered, but the town of Steamboat Springs was quite different, as well as Phippsburg and Oak Creek. Of course it has been almost fourty years since I had been up there. I remember playing at The Inn At Thunderhead back then and there was only a small dirt road up the side of the mountain with one large grey building for the lodge. Now the entier mountain side is coverred in condos and you can’t see much of it except for the ski runs on the mountain.

The trip got me thinking about how so much can change but how much the same we feel inside regardless of how old we may get. My body say’s 56 but my mind and heart say 20, perhaps this is the diachotomy of existance we all must feel but fail to recognize at times. Perhaps this is the joke played on us by time and space, supposedly both are illusions yet we feel something change as our bodies do become different regardless of the illusion of time.

Father’s Day, a day about Father’s. Somehow it never really seems to be like Mother’s Day, Mother’s get roses or candy or something very beautiful but men, we get ties (perhaps to hang ourselves), calogne ( do we smell bad?), tools (as if we don’t do enough work already). My father was a hard man to live with and so in turn I guess I am too. For years he wouldn’t talk to me much or even say he loved me or hug me. I guess in those days and being from the generation he is, that isn’t manly behaviour. Now, every time we talk on the phone he tell’s me he loves me.

For many years I held a grudge for my father and pretty much felt hate for him, for all the things he did and didn’t do. Over the years I realized how foolish that was and found forgiveness for him. Funny thing, as soon as I forgave him, I began to forgive myself for my own short comings.

Dad never spoke much about the war to me, he fought in Korea. I remember once as a kid we were watching a show called The 20th Century, it was a historical show much like those on the History Channel these days, I must have been about 10 years old. That night there was a show about a certain offensive that took place in Korea about a platoon of men who had been trapped in the mountains of Korea in the winter. About half way through the show my father who had been very quite, suddenly said ” I was there”.
I remember looking at him expecting more, but he never said another word about it.

Not too long ago we were talking on the phone and somehow we had gotten on the subject of my sisters bickering over my Mother’s jewlery after she had died. He asked me about a ruby ring. He told me he had given it to my mom. Then he told me an astonishing story. He told me he had been wounded while in the war and during his recuperation they put him on laundry detail, while washing blankets he had shaken out a blanket and out fell this ring, a very nice ruby ring. Then he told me he shook the blanket once more and out fell a finger. In all the years I had spoken with him he had never told me this.

I guess what I’m geting at is, we as children and young people tend to judge our parents pretty harshly without even knowing our parents as people until years later. This can only happen if we give them a chance and as adults we open ourselves to them as people. I know of many father’s who’s children are not accesable to them because of astranged situations or just plain misunderstanding. I myself have been in that position, and found/find it to be very painful, perhaps it ws this experience that led me to forgive my father, I had learned what he must have felt.

I won’t say Happy Father’s day, what I will say is Father’s deserve something different than we have gotten over the years and perhaps it’s time we rethink this whole Holiday. I feel strongly about the fact that many Fathers have received unfair treatment and although I know many women have too, this day is about Father’s, so hug yours and if you can’t, call him up and let him do all the talking, you never know you just might find out who you really are.

Well here is the scoop for any gamers who may find this blog. I have a laptop running Vista with the notorious Mobile Intel 945 chip, of course most people will tell you that Halo, Neverwinter Nights among other games will not play with this config. Some will say that Halo and NWN will squeek by. After some tweeking I have found what I believe to be the best configuration for playing Halo on my laptop.

Within the Game go to video setup and do this:
Framerate - vsync
Specular - No
Shadows - Yes
Particles - Low
Texture - Medium

Now on the computer go to “Graphics Properties” then “3d Settings” once there here’s what you do:

Async Flip - Off
Triple Buffering - Default
Flipping Policy - Flip
Depth Buffer Bit Depth - 24bit
Force S3TC Texture Compression - Off
Force FXT1 Texture Compression - On
Driver Memory Footprint - High
Texture Color Depth - 32bits
Anisotropic Filtering - On

These settings are for Halo only, settings for games like Neverwinter Nights are a bit different. This works for me but I’m sure you could tweek things further to your liking. Happy Gaming!