January 5th, weird weather

Posted by Greybeard on Jan 5th, 2012 in Local, News and weather | 0 comments

Here’s a  sunset picture from today January 5th, 2012 on the Au Gres River.

Definitely weird weather.   You can’t really tell in the photo,  but the river -is- frozen over,  but there’s hardly a spec of snow to be seen anywhere.   The low last night was 28 degrees and the high today 36 degrees.   And,  they say it’s going to warm up tomorrow.

Newt on the Second Ammendment

Posted by Greybeard on Jan 5th, 2012 in News and weather, Political | 0 comments

Thanks to Borepatch for this link.

http://youtu.be/oWsE9jvwjLA

It’s a 14 minute speech by Newt Gingrich about the importance of the second ammendment,  Newt is not using a TELEPROMPTER.

Xoom follow up report (security)

Posted by Greybeard on Jan 3rd, 2012 in Technology and Music | 0 comments

First off,  I -did- recover in time for New Years Eve.   I was  a bit tired,  but a good time was had.

Next up the “ongoing adventures of the Xoom”,  (my wife’s new android tablet).   Her favorite game was called “Words with Friends”,  I say “was” because it no longer runs on the Xoom.  After  a few hours of research,  I found out that Zynga,  the maker of the game,  no longer supports Android O.S.’s beyond version 2.6 .    Since we’re running the latest O.S.  version 3.2,   it’s likely that that’s part of the cause of the problem.

You see,  Zynga,  is an Apple vendor,  and their versions of their games that run on Android,  are ports of the apple products.  (and evidently not very good ports).  It’s odd that the game ran well on her Xoom for the first month or so that she had it,  then suddenly will not even start up without throwing a “Forced Close” error.   It’s not so odd,  that this issue started right after an automatic update of the game.

I can understand why Zynga would decide not to support a device in the future,  but not why they would push out an update that would kill existing/working games on those devices?

Anyway,  I found her a new wordgame to play “Word Feud Free”.  It seems to work fine, across many platforms including all Android O.S.’s.

Up til now I haven’t spent a lot of time on the Xoom,  but I did have my email on it and had the Xoom sync’ing my email.  I found it pretty convenient,  but as I learned while researching the game problems,  convenience at a very high cost.    The thing that really set off flags is;   After the game was installed,  but not running,  it was still accessing my email.   When using the Xoom for unrelated functions,  a window would pop up stating that “Words with Friends” has experienced a “Forced Close”.  To me indicating that it’s doing something hidden,  when ever it’s installed on the machine.

Well this really got me going,  so I started monitoring my firewall  and router logs.   It seems that most, if not all of the games  on her Xoom operate much the same way.   And many have access to her email account,  FULL access!   Current Bottom Line:  I’ve scoured the Xoom of my personal email accounts,  and we don’t use the Xoom for any financial transactions,  nor enter any private info on it.  (new nickname for the Xoom = Chatty Cathy)

With various Anti-Virus and security company’s announcing that the hot new targets for hackers  are phones and tablets,  I’m a little worried about those who do their banking on their phone or tablet.

Trying to heal for New Years Eve

Posted by Greybeard on Dec 28th, 2011 in Local, News and weather | 0 comments

A bad chest cold with lot’s of coughing,  that brought on back spasms,  has been keeping me down since Christmas Day.  The cold is fading,  but my back is still pretty sore.

With the temperature last night bottoming out at 15 degrees,  in the house  isn’t really that bad of a place to be.  Hoping to be back in the saddle for New Years Eve!

Merry Christmas!

Posted by Greybeard on Dec 24th, 2011 in News and weather, Political | 0 comments

I hope everyone reading this has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

If you need more than that tonight,  check out Bill Whittle’s “Three Years of Obama” .

Taxes, taxes,, and health costs

Posted by Greybeard on Dec 20th, 2011 in News and weather, Political | 0 comments

We’ll I thought it might be time to get in  Gripe or two,  live up the the namesake,  ya’know.

I heard on the news the other day,  that now,  the State of Michigan is predicting a 1 billion dollar surplus!!!!    This only a few month’s after they announce that they are going to (for the first time in Michigan’s history)  TAX retiree’s pensions.   Seems that they needed money and the only way to keep the state running was to pick the pockets of elderly people on a fixed and ever decreasing income.

Ok,  so  since they now have a $billion$ or so extra floating around,   you’d think that someone would think about reversing that stupid idea to rape the elderly.   NOPE,  I’d guess that’s asking for to much.  They’re now chatting endlessly about how their going to spend that billion on new projects.

On another note:   Letter’s came today from my various health and pension providers,  explaining changes in benefits.  From GM/UAW  I get a letter stating that their going to start take state taxes out of my pension in January,  and that  my new dental coverage is only on preventative treatments,  no repairs.   It also states that I can also keep my COBRA coverage,  which I have been paying for, for the last couple of years, ( at the tune of $110 dollars a month).   And for the $110 a month, Cobra will continue to cover a portion of most dental repairs.   There’s also a note stating that if I drop the Cobra coverage,  I can never get it back,  even if the new GM/UAW coverage goes away.  Bottom line on the GM/UAW letter,  ,  very little will change,  it will still be $110 a month if I want real coverage,  there are just two different providers now.

On the possibly brighter side,  I also recieved a letter from my School pension provider.   Kind of a coverage breakdown, and notice that they’d be taking State taxes out of my check come January.   As I browsed the letter,  I noticed wording that indicates that I can get Dental  and vision coverage through “them”, for myself and my wife for $7.26 a month!   If this is as it seems in the letter,   I could save over $112 dollars a month by dropping the GM/UAW eye and dental care.   Interesting…..    I’ll have to make some calls and get confirmation,,  and investigate the stability of the school retirement,   but this might be a way to go.   Drawbacks are:  That I would lose forever my GM/UAW coverage.    But then,   that will likely go away someday anyway.

As I said,  it will take some investigation before I make any changes.   The School’s medical coverage has always been way more expensive for me (with only 10 years service) than GM’s medical coverage.  It seems rather strange that the dental and eye coverage would be so much more affordable?