A Crummy Commercial

Don't irritate me, computer, I'm already bugged !  Yesterday I started seeing this little star in the Firefox icon:  Apparently it is for profiles ?  I don't know or care what profiles are, I want this little star GONE !  I turned off profiles, no help.  I may have to give up and live with the little star. This is another thing that annoys me: Yes, gmail, I deleted something and now I want to bolt, why are you doing: "mother, may I" ??  I will probably just have to live with that as well. Another irritation is Hotmail.  Lately it stinks.  It will erase emails from the screen, I haven't deleted them.  So I have to refresh the screen and voila, the email is back.  But it's a waste of time.  Isn't time saving supposed to be one of the justifications for computers in the first place ? I had clicked on an email and then the screen blanked after a refresh the email appears Now possibly this is due to the Lenovo Ideapad memory going bad - ...

I heard about two deaths today, first Dolly Parton, I knew something was up when I saw this thumbnail from Dave Letterman: Dave Letterman's thumbnails on Youtube, signposts of death ! As a boy growing up in the 1960s, none of us tuned into The Porter Wagoner Show  to listen to guys with high hair and spangly suits: We tuned in to see Dolly: I imagine the ratings went UP when Dolly joined the show.  We are all mammalians after all :)  And I was 12 years old in 1967.  But she didn't just sing songs and be on TV and in the movies - she created her own music - those songs will live on. Second, a trivial death but a death of something I used every day: The various Nitter instances allowed users to look at twitter without having to sign in or endure the ads or engage in the endless scroll.  It was nice to just check the tweets of accounts you liked and you are done after seeing their new stuff. I don't get why someone would buy twitter, then ditch the name (which was ...

https://www.pcmag.com/news/is-your-website-down-outage-hits-hosting-provider-namecheap Unfortunately, my email and website are hosted by Namecheap.  So I happened to try email and got this: Then I tried the WB9KZY.COM site and got this: Thinking maybe it was a browser thing I tried Edge instead of Firefox and got this: Namecheap did have some explanations up: Hopefully this isn't a huge problem for my business but customers have enough reasons to buy from other vendors, don't need this in addition ! Update: sometime between 6:00 PM and 6:47 PM on Thursday, August 13, 2026 both email and the web site are back. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

https://www.un.org/en/observances/international-day-friendship I am late to World Friendship Day on July 30, 2026 (I got the name wrong, it's International Day of Friendship but you get the idea).  Bing offered 20 points for creating World Friendship Day pictures using AI.  I tried QSL cards: This was the input: ham radio qsl card for WB9KZY world friendship day showing an Elecraft K2 radio   Kinda nothing special, not horrible but generic, another AI miss (or AI whisperer swing and miss). And I didn't even get the 20 points, so three strikes on that one, missed the day, missed a good QSL and missed the points :( Here's one of my photo QSLs: Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

For some reason I thought of the song: Bandstand Boogie .  I found it on Youtube, there is the original instrumental by Les Elgart and his orchestra (which is really catchy and brief): source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHiFsRQEHQw Then there's also the version with lyrics by Barry Manilow (longer but also good): source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTXWf2_H0FI Now this search was in a private window, so theoretically it shouldn't "pollute" my regular Youtube feed, right ? But then later in the day my regular Youtube feed recommended this: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsLT-zRWWdQ I didn't actually watch this Youtube video, I watched the movie instead.       Escape From New York is a good movie, fast paced and entertaining but there's almost no music - except for the Les Elgart version of Bandstand Boogie !  Ernest Borgnine's character, Cabbie, has it on cassette in his yellow Checker cab.  And the song plays a ro...

When I see this: The trail cam gets shut off and brought inside, so no trail cam pictures from last night. While listening to the Brewers Mets game the phone woke itself up and had an ominous tornado warning message.  Unfortunately I didn't save a screen shot but it got me all rattled.  Here's the gist of it: Not sure where it was actually, probably over the lake. there's a red box on the southern part of the island, is that where it was ? One thing I did notice again, Starlink is like our old dog, Buddy.  When there was a bad storm Bud would go downstairs and lay in his crate.  When Starlink encounters heavy rain it doesn't work.  I got a red LED on the router (it didn't photograph red for some reason or I'd include a picture). So anyway, I wasn't always online during the storm.  There was a little hail and then heavy rain along with the usual winds.  But I didn't hear "the train" so no tornado around me. Eventually after the Brewer game the p...

Available here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78084 or here: https://archive.org/download/AgathaBundle/The%20Mysterious%20Mr.%20Quin_%20A%20Shor%20-%20Agatha%20Christie.pdf The book is in the public domain as of 1/1/2026. I listened to several stories in the book on Chapter a Day: https:\/\/wpr-podcast.streamguys1.com\/cad\/cad260629.mp3 https:\/\/wpr-podcast.streamguys1.com\/cad\/cad260630.mp3 https:\/\/wpr-podcast.streamguys1.com\/cad\/cad260701.mp3 https:\/\/wpr-podcast.streamguys1.com\/cad\/cad260702.mp3 https:\/\/wpr-podcast.streamguys1.com\/cad\/cad260703.mp3 I wanted to read more even though I'm kind of tired of murder shows in general - these three stories didn't involve murder just mystery.  But after reading some of the stories in the book (12 in all, 3 of them were on Chapter a Day) there are indeed murders a plenty :( One thing that the internet does do well is looking up unfamiliar words, for example: "two countries separated by a common language" - so...

I finally got my id.me seal of approval on Tuesday.  This is required if you want to get online with the IRS or Social Security.  Not having an activated cell phone makes id.me almost impossible to work with.  So now that I finally have a cell phone I tried signing up on Friday (6-26).  But it didn't like something I did (I suspect that it was the VPN) so I had to have a video chat with a person.  That didn't happen until Tuesday morning (6-30).  The elapsed time was less than an hour and the call with "Irving" only took a few minutes but still what a huge waste of time/money. Anyway, another thing accomplished, I was able to get into the IRS site.  Hopefully next year I'll be able to file Federal taxes electronically or check Social Security for the first time since they started this baloney. Just wait, the 666 tattoo on the forehead is coming (for convenience at security) so be sure to leave space ! source:  https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/...

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2c9-LDP0t0 No, not some flounder, Frontier.  This ominous looking piece of mail popped up on Informed Delivery: It's the (hopefully) final insult from Frontier: Apparently for Frontier just refunding the money electronically (the way I was paying) was too easy - same for a physical checkie.  They have to provide a debit card.  I would give it away except that it literally has my name on it :( I finally flipped through enough hoops and was able to request a no-fee check for the balance: In 7 to 10 business days I should have a checkie.  I should have dumped Frontier a decade ago ! Update 7-7-2026: I received and deposited the check. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/06/microsoft-adds-another-year-to-windows-10-extended-update-program/ Good news for once ?   Although I actually am typing this on a Windows 11 laptop, I do have a couple of other Windows 10 machines that I still use so this will be nice: Considering the chip shortages resulting from the AI bubble I can see why they might extend support, it's just insanely expensive to buy computer hardware.  SSD drives are twice the price they were recently. One thing: when Windows support does finally end the only nice thing is that a lot of stuff can be turned off which results in a faster bootup time IF you turn off the internet.  I have an old Windows 98 laptop that I use for printing and scanning - it never sees the internet and works just fine. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm