Today I almost could not log into my on-line banking due to its "Layered Security", which selects a random question to ask from a set of them. Some of the questions *I* don't have a good answer (for various reasons). It wanted to know what my first job was. The answer sort of depends on what counts as a job, etc. I could not remember what I originally entered and ending up making a couple of guess before managing to get it right. It then asked another one (equally brainless). I need to go back to the set up page and fill in all of the answers with a consistent set of offensive obscenities. (Such answers would really be more secure than the correct answers.)

Of course, the only reason the bank does this 'Layered Security' is because of Microsoft. Microsoft created an insecure operating system, with an insecure web browser and insecure E-Mail client and 'trained' a generation (or two) of computer users to use the Internet in insecure ways. Those of use with proper secure operating systems, web browsers, E-Mail clients, and secure Internet usage habits have to suffer because of the crap Microsoft has unleashed upon the world.

I don't like the new facebook. It is harder (for me anyway) to use. There are several problems, with the main one being the wider format.

The wider format is bad. I use a 600x800 browser window, even though my screen can handle 768x1024. It is consider bad web programming to require the horizontal scroll bar. When I visit facebook I get a horizontal scroll bar. I *won't* maximize my browser window -- I need to be able to monitor and access application windows that would be hidden if I maximized my browser window. A *properly* designed web page should adjust itself to almost any reasonably sized browser window and thus avoid the "dreaded" horizontal scroll bar.

The news feed uses too large a font size and thus takes up too much space. Again there seems to be the presumption of a larger browser window, although the vertical scroll bar is not considered a bad thing.

The new facebook also seems to take longer to load. I don't know why that is exactly. I am on a slow dial-up connection. I am lucky if I get a 30Kbps connection. Most of the time I am getting something like a 25kbps connection -- yes, I have a 56K modem and my ISP supports 56K connections -- the problem is the poor quality of Verizon's phone system. The new facebook seems to be even worse than the old facebook WRT slow dial-up users. And yes, there are *still* a lot of people in the USA with slow dial-up connections with no real options for any sort of faster Internet. If I had any say in how things are done, I'd make sure corporate web designers and programmers were limited to slow Internet connections, at least some of the time -- maybe a slow Internet Tuesdays? I.e. every Tuesday some sort of bandwidth limitation would be imposed, just to see how bad things would be for people with slow Internet connections.

OK, my (and a bunch of other Wendellites) phone service went out Monday morning and was out until sometime midday Tuesday -- 30 some hours. (And yes I was jonesing real bad for my Internet, bad a dial-up is.)
This is NOT good. I know Verizon can do better. Just about exactly 2 years ago a tornado went through Wendell center and took down trees, barns, utility poles, power lines, and (of course!) telephone lines. Verizon had things functioning in something like 15 hours or so. Sunday night/Monday morning we just had some plain old rain. There wasn't even and thunder and lightning, just your common bout of rain. Whatever. Something broke in Verizon's network and a bunch of people in Wendell lost phone service early Monday morning. For some reason it took Verizon until midday on Tuesday to get thins fixed. It seems to me that something is very wrong inside Verizon. And I don't mean the telephone infrastructure (although that is simply old and decrepit in places).

I really don't know how to fix Verizon's internal problems. So long as Verizon has a monopoly on the local telephone infrastructure, problems like this will crop up from time to time. The usual way a dissatisfied customer deals with a company that provides a bad product or service is to change vendors. Because Verizon has a monopoly on local land line telephone service and given the lack of cell service in this area, there is no option of 'changing vendors' -- if you want/need local phone service, Verizon is the only game in town. One has to take whatever 'abuse' Verizon dishes out. If they drop the ball and you are without phone service for 30 hours, tough. There is nothing you can do about it -- you might as well just crawl under a rock for those 30 hours. The thing is I'm saying "Verizon: I don't want to crawl under a rock for 30 hours, just because you dropped the ball."

Robert "The thorn in Verizon's side"...
(I'm going to print this blog entry and send a copy to the usual people: Verizon's New York HQ, their Boston office, the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Energy, the Federal Communications Commission, State Senator Stanley C. Rosenberg,
and State Representative Stephen Kulik. I'm also going to "share' this blog entry with several of the local media outlets as well.)

OK, I just been locked out of another banking-related site due to its so called "Enhanced Security", this time my UMass 5 College E-Statements. This means I am going to be not as green as I would like to be, since I will now be getting paper statements. It has been over a year since I finally gave up on my Greenfield Savings Bank on-line banking. Both of these because of their so called "Enhanced Security" and the broken requirements for so-call 'secure passwords'. There is NOTHING about putting digits into a password that makes it secure. NOTHING. I could have a password of "Wendell01379". The so-called "Enhanced Security" would consider this a secure password. It is NOT a secure password. It is a totally insecure password, even though it meets the test used by the enhanced security's password checker. But this is the least of the problems with the enhanced security. The main problem with the enhanced security is the that is uses two separate pages, one for the log in name and a separate page for the password. This is (obviously) meant to prevent people from using their web browser from storing their passwords. I'm guessing the problem is Internet Explorer / MS-Windows -- both are too insecure to be trusted with passwords for on-line banking. I don't use either, but because of Microsoft's inability to create software that is even minimally secure, I end up being burned.



So because of Microsoft, I will now be wasting a few trees (in the form of paper statements from my bank). Because of Microsoft, I am unable to use on-line banking and bill payments using one of my bank accounts -- this means I will be writing more checks and causing additional greenhouse gases (by mail transport vehicles). In other words, Microsoft is causing me to be less green. Even though I don't use Microsoft's products, I am being negatively affected by those same products.



I wonder how many other people are similarly affected by this. Probably many.

Little Brother is a novel about teenagers in San Francisco who get caught at the wrong place at the wrong time and get picked up by the Department of Homeland Security after a major terrorist attack. After several days of being interrogated, they are released to discover that their city has become a police state, run by the Department of Homeland Security. One of these teens sets out to take his city back from the DHS terrorists, mostly by proving that the security measures intended to provide security and safety from terrorists don't (and can't) work and that the DHS is creating far more terror that the terrorists.

Although this book is a work of fiction, everything in it could happen tomorrow: all of the gadgets and technology the book talks about already exist. In some ways this is a very scary book, probably even more so than George Orwell's 1984. It is however a fun read. It is fast paced and the characters are believable.

Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow, find it at your local library today!
# Reading level: Young Adult
# Hardcover: 384 pages
# Publisher: Tor Teen (April 29, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0765319853
# ISBN-13: 978-0765319852

I was heading out to Frank & Karen's place down in Shutsbury this morning to pile brush and later work with Frank (he is clearing a place in his woods for a solar array), and as I was heading down the back side of Lock Hill Road a black bear crossed the road. Yes, this is Wendell. We seem to have a lots of wildlife in town. This is the first bear I've seen in town. I have seen various other wild creatures in town: far too many insects and arachnids, plenty of birds, the usual rodents, as well as deer, foxes, porcupines, as well as salamanders, slugs, snails, worms, and snakes. I stopped by trike while still some distance from the bear, since I wanted to give him (?) plenty of space and waited a bit to be sure he (?) was alone before continuing down the road.

After zipping down Locke Hill Road and onto Jennison Road, I got to the intersection where Locks Village Road (paved, Wendell), Jennison Road (dirt, Wendell), Wendell Road (dirt, Shutsbury) and Lake View Road (paved, Shutsbury) meet. This is also where Camp Anderson (now called Pine Brook Camp and Conference Center). There was some excitement there: two fire trucks - one from Wendell and one from Shutsbury. There did not appear to be a fire though.

Anyway, the rest of the trip was uneventful. I arrived at Frank & Karen's and piled brush up in the woods until Frank got home with a pair of new tires for his trailer. Frank and I worked in the woods and we felled and limed four good sized oak trees. The first tree got hung up, but just as I was about to put a cable on it (so we could pull it with the tractor), it fell on its own. I guess it didn't want to suffer the indignity of being pulled down by the tractor.

After working until 5pm I looked at some older trike tires Frank had (I need new rubber on my trike) and went home. The ride home was uneventful -- I took the longer way, which is less steep and paved.

I watched Logan's Run last night for the umpteenth time. I decided to watch this movie because it seems that this is "lastday" (in a different sense than the movie's sense!) for Celeste and her schoolmates -- the last day of the school year. Logan's Run is a SciFi movie about a city of people who are the survivors of some (unspecified) holocaust. The city is an isolated world with strict population control, not unlike high school in some ways: one is limited to only 4 years of life as a high school student and high school is somewhat isolated...

Anyway, Celly and her friends will be finished with school this year soon, and can spend the summer having fun and doing all of the usual summertime fun stuff and not have schoolwork hanging over them. No more finals to take or papers to write or boring books to read or silly homework assignments to complete.

After making my supper tonight I was carrying it to my computer shed and discovered a quite lively neighborhood complaint in progress in the back yard. Mr. Nutkin was loudly complaining about Eunice. Both were up in trees (separate ones). I am not sure how things will be resolved. Eunice was calmly looking at Mr. Nutkin, who was going on at some length at the top of his lungs. While I don't really object to Eunice seeking varity in her diet, I would prefer it if she would work on indoor rodents and not bother with the outdoor ones.

(For those who are not really following things, Mr. Nutkin is one of the (many) resident grey squirrils and Eunice is our cat. Oh, I am only guessing that it is Mr. Nutkin -- it could be Ms. Nutkin.)

I triked down in the Valley today. Down North Levertt Road to Rt 47 and then down 47 through Sunderland to Hadley. Then the bike path to Wally World (aka WalMart). As expected it was a nice ride. The farms in Sunderland and Hadley appear to have been planted and some crops are starting to poke up.

At WalMart I bought some paper, toothpaste, and a pair of work gloves. No, not terribly exciting Then had lunch at the Subway in WalMart -- the usual, a 6" hot roasted chicken on whole wheat with yellow mustard. I also got some popcorn and raisins for the road. Then over to the bank to deposit a check and my surplus supply of dead presidents -- putting the dead presidents in the bank helps to pay some bills. Going to and from the bank meant 'braving' Rt 9. It would be really, really nice if the DCR would put in 'exit ramps' to ALL of the businesses the bike path goes past, not just at the one shopping center and a couple other places.

Then I rode home. On the way home I stopped at a farm stand in Sunderland (just over the Sunderland-Hadley town line) and got some Fresh Asparagus and Native Spinach. The ride home was nice too. I'm going to make a cream sauce (really 1% milk sauce) for the Asparagus and serve it over brown rice. Yummy.

Tomorrow I'm going to trike out to Montague and pull Knotweed.

Well, it was a great show last night. A good time was definitately had by all. Klondike provided the sound system and his tech, Justin, did a great job. The music was great. Bob Rosser is probably the greatest guitar player in the immediately area. Bob brought in two of the several bands he plays with: Nexus and Blame It On Tina.

The open mic was fun too. We had a singer-songwrited from Lowel up first, then we had Hadama (Karen Traub) doing belly dancing with her friend the moon (Kathy Becker). The Wafflina was up and did a parody of belly dancing (Waffles the clown). The Francis Doughty played a couple of tunes on his guitar.

The first set of the main show featured Nexus: Rick Ledford on rhythm guitar and vocals, Jim Rivers, congas, guitar and vocals,
Bob Rosser, lead guitar and vocals, Lefty Cullen, bass guitar and vocals. Folk/Alternitive rock originals and a couple of covers. Very nice. A very nice set with many great guitar solos and riffs by Bob. They finished up the set with a cover of Tom Petty's "Last Dance of Mary Jane", featuring Myron Becker on harmonica.

The second set featured Blame it on Tina, consisting of Jen Spingla on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Bob Rosser on lead guitar and vocals, Tina Horn on durms and vocals, and Klondike Koehler on bass. Jen writes most of the songs, but a few of the songs were written by Bob and Tina. The second set ended with members of Nexus coming on stage and the who group doing a cover of The Band's "The Weight".

The beneficiary was Good Neighbors, a local organization founded by Bob's late wife Rosalie, that distributes food to local people in need.