Spybot Versus Family Tree Maker

Spybot is a wonderful free anti-malware tool for your computer. Although Microsoft Security Essential handles email security and some browsing security, it doesn't protect against everything. Spybot helps deal with the rest.

My computer was invaded a couple of months ago by a trojan horse called "FunMoods" that invites itself in as a source of nifty icons with which you can dress up your email. I'm not sure how it got in. Suddenly my Google button was a Funmoods button.  Funmoods would do the Google search and bring back its recommended answers. I couldn't evict it.

The cure for Funmoods was the free Malwarebytes Anti-Malware program. It worked like a charm. It found 57 things to delete. Funmoods was gone. Yay.

And then Malwarebytes started harping about subscribing, and I remembered that long ago on a galaxy of machines far away, I had installed something called Spybot that intercepted malware. So I installed Spybot. See if it would do the job.

And then... the Family Tree Maker on my machine could no longer merge info from online into my family tree. An Ancestry.com support staffer suggested that perhaps an antivirus program was interfering with the process.

So I uninstalled Malwarebytes, a task I had put off. No luck. Could the problem be Spybot?
 
I had to google to find out how to turn Spybot off. Here is how you do it:

In Spybot, click the button that brings up the Advanced Tools list. Click on Settings.

  

In Settings, click on System Services. There are three switches for turning off different functions.  Turn off the top two switches.

And voila - turning off Spybot enables Family Tree Maker.

So... if you have Family Tree Maker and discover you have a virus or trojan that your regular anti-bad stuff program didn't intercept - - try MalwareBytes.

Malwarebytes works with Family Tree Maker.

Microsoft Security Essentials Fails

I replaced McAfee Antivirus years ago due to its insistence on billing me for services on computers long dead. The replacement - Microsoft Security Essentials - has now failed.

Microsoft Security Essentials - MSE - is a free anti-virus for the Windows Operating System. It protects against viruses in the mail, on floppy disks and flash drives, on web pages, and apparently protects against viruses that attack the operating system directly, looking for an unused port that's been left open.

They missed a spot. My computer is now a "funmoods" computer. It has been invaded  by malware. I ran a full MSE scan against the computer, including all drives. It did not find "funmoods".

Until I get "funmoods" removed for sure, I should not use this machine for online banking or buying.

Immediate recourse: I bought a magazine with a DVD with the Ubuntu 12.10 operating system on it. Ubuntu is a Linux system, so it will be free from bugs naturally. I plan to reserve - partition - a separate space on the hard drive for this operating system. When I start the computer, I should be able to choose between Ubuntu and Windows.

It looks like Malwarebytes is the most recommended anti-"funmoods" program. Microsoft only gives hints on how to remove it - some of which don't work!  But perhaps that's because these suggestions come from users.

One wonders why Microsoft, in all its might and grandeur, cannot defeat such a simple little invader.

In one response, Microsoft instructs users to download and use the "Microsoft Security Scanner". When I follow the link to the page, though, the software's name is "Microsoft Safety Scanner".  This dual naming is so utterly unprofessional that I doubt that it comes from Microsoft. I think my computer is trying to spoof me, overlaying something else onto the web page. Time for Malwarebytes.
.....

Malwarebytes worked. It found 58 objects, about 53 of which were "funmoods" related. And it deleted them.  Bingo.

Why on earth Microsoft Security Essentials cannot do the same is a mystery.  Why should the Windows operating system maker's own protection device fail so publicly on something so simple? One commenter thinks that MSE leaves back doors open so that the US government can intrude at will. "Funmoods" found out about the back doors. But MSE still has to leave them open - they can't shut the government out. So they blithely let users put messages up about how to repair the damage, but they themselves do nothing to keep the damage from happening.

Does anyone have a better theory?

Composing for Surround Sound

My desktop computer, although bottom-of-the-line, came with six audio jacks on the back and two in front.  It can play surround sound.

$20 of mini-earphones from eBay and - see below - anyone can listen to surround sound. The possibilities for arranging music for surround seem seductive.


Here's what I've found so far...  

My desktop plays 8 channels at 32 bits definition, 192kbps - four stereo pairs. Most modern desktops apparently can do this.  I only needed to download and install a large set of codecs from CNet. These are supposed to work on XP as well as Windows 7, so the same package may work on your  machine. Here's the link:

1)  Download and install this set of codecs.  

It installed quickly for me. A reboot, and then, when I went to  "Control Panel / Sound / Playback / Speaker Properties / General" up pops a screen that shows four stereo outputs, as follows.

       L    R      Front panel (green)
     RL  RR      Rear panel (black)
     C    Sub    Rear panel (red)  (This is for the two monaural channels, "Center" and "Sub-bass.")
     SL   SR      Rear panel (blue)   (Not sure what the S stands for.) 

Cakewalk lists all four pairs of outputs, although it can only send to one stereo pair.

2)  Test your installation. Download this little .AC3 file.  It's an 8-channel audio file.  It sends audio through each channel, naming the channel as it goes. Play it with the Windows Media Player. You should hear each channel reporting in.

The .AC3 file is the filetype for surround sound files. AC3 files fulfill the "ATSC A/52" specification, a phrase which brings up a lot of data on google.
Both QuickTime and Windows Media Player can play the .AC3 file type.


3)  Audio output: 

   a) The interface choices.
      1)  eBay sells little USB stereo adapters for $3.19. They claim "5.1 support" but there appears to be only one stereo output. Four of these and a couple of USB splitters would give 8 physical channels of output for under $20.

      2) a full 8 channel 7.1 adapter costs $18.53.   (googled "usb audio adapters s/pdif")   This adaptor has 4 stereo output jacks.
   
  a)  Speakers: most computer stores - even our Office Depot - sell 5-speaker sets for 5.1 surround sound. To get the two extra channels for 7.1 sound, add a pair of powered speakers - old computer speakers, music studio monitors or even an old hifi with a couple of speakers. Then you will have 7.1 surround sound.

   b)  Headsets:  make your own surround sound headset for $8 - $23:    http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-make-51-surround-sound-headphones

   c)  Headsets:  $75  buys a pair of 7.1 "surround sound" earphones.  $90 buys a wifi headset.

- - - - - -

How is a person to make the music?

Audio editors that can handle 8 channels of output cost $350 and up. Sound Forge and Adobe Audition are the best, and the Adobe has more features.  That's something for the future. Nice to know it's there.

For now, I can test out ideas by exporting 4 same-length stereo files from Cakewalk. They can fade from one to the other, moving music through the sound sphere.  FFmpeg can compress these files as a group into the AC3 format. There may be other tools that can do this, too. But I'll probably need to get Adobe Audition to do anything serious.

So that's what I've found. My headset (I ordered the wifi 7.1) will be showing up in a day or two. If you liked, you yourself could begin to play with the environment for $40 or less.

There are programs that convert ordinary stereo to 8-channel sound. I suspect that they split the incoming sound by frequency and give different acoustic effects to the different frequency ranges. But people like it. There is certainly nothing beyond 2 channels of information in stereo sound. Similarly truthful, there are cheap usb adapters on eBay that claim to provide "virtual 7.1" sound - that is to say, stereo. You can play artificially created surround sound through them and they produce stereo again.

Musical compositions that are intended directly for the surround sound environment may come as something new. With the technology in place in many homes but only used for games and re-processed stereo, even a so-so composer might be able to find a big market for his work.

Adobe is Force-Feeding Us McAfee

I took McAfee off all my systems a few years ago after they billed me for their services on a machine long dead. They do not check to see if their periodic virus signature updates have been successful before they bill you. I installed Microsoft Security Essentials, which is free, self-updating, and covers all my security needs. Unless I give permission for something else to happen. Which I did.

This morning, Adobe requested permission to update its Flash Player. It has been doing this about once a day, lately.

Violating my permission, they also downloaded and installed on my machine a copy of "McAfee Security Scan".  It is in my C:\Program Files (x86)\McAfee Security Scan folder.

This immediately came to life and invited me to get involved with McAfee. Sorry, honey, we broke up.  McAfee paid Adobe to put their software on my computer.

I have not restarted my computer.

Did it really install?  In the "McAfee Security Scan" folder there is an "Uninstall.exe".  But when I float the cursor over the name, I see "File Description: McAfee Security Scan Plus Installer."

Installer, not uninstaller. This could be risky. I don't think I'll click it.

Is McAfee now listed as a program on the computer?  I click the "Start" button and go to Control Panel. Select "Programs and Features". Yes, it is.  It has been installed.

Adobe has actually installed McAfee software on my computer without my permission. What a blow to their reputation!  They are monetizing their reputation.  Has Adobe been bought by Bain?

Can I uninstall the invader from the Control Panel?  I click on it, see an "uninstall", click again - and yes!  It is no longer on the list. Windows is happy that it is gone.

But the McAfee folder is still in the Program Files (x86) folder. The program is still there. It could waken again at any time.

How to get rid of the McAfee folder?  Right-click on it. Select "Delete". Click again to provide permission. And it's gone.

I think I need to wait a couple of weeks before allowing another Adobe upgrade. Maybe a couple of months. Until it starts crashing. These daily updates are just invasive things that it gets paid to do, and you don't know what it's doing.

An End To Varicosity?

At almost 70, a problem that I've been fighting in recent months and years is an increasing varicosity in my lower calves. A bit of blood seeps out and this has created a reddish brown rash. When I stand for several hours, the sag in the lower end of the circulatory system reduces blood pressure in the brain, and I lose some higher functions. The blood vessels have become stretched, and, now thinner, they have become leaky.

Solution: Put the legs up on the desk, when I sit at the computer, and put the keyboard on my knees. Putting just the feet up on the desk isn't good - it can strain the knees. But crossing my feet and resting my calves on the desk, with the keyboard on my knees, slid to the right four inches so it's centered and kept from sliding down to my tummy by a notebook - this has me feeling better than I have in ages.

This position may also help prevent carpal tunnel syndrome. I sit at a 60 degree angle to the desk. The right mid-forearm rests on the edge of the desk and the hand floats over the mouse.

No tension.

Gazpacho

Gazpacho: a cold soup made entirely of blenderized vegetables. I use a one-quart thrift shop blender. Blend until its like catsup.

Put in: one small garlic clove or some garlic powder. Half an onion, a stick or two of celery, a green pepper. A tomato or a big squirt of catsup. Salt. Then blend. Takes three minutes to make.

Last night I pureed it very fine for the first time. Easier to digest. And this morning I feel reborn.

Make Your Own Public Option?

If the health care bill passes without a public option, many of us on limited means will be making their own public options. Opt out of Blue Cross. Go to the county hospital emergency room if you need any help whatsoever.

An amazing number of increasingly poor people have no other choice.

The Secret Ice Cream Hiding In Your Freezer Can Make You Young Again

In your freezer door, do you have a small, round, orange container? When you take the top off it, is the stuff inside also orange? You are in luck. This is a special kind of ice cream, sometimes called "Frozen Orange Juice".

Take a spoon and scrape off a bite. Put the lid back on.

Do this now and then, and you will lose about five years.

Comes a Time

Comes a time a person stops being who another person needs him to be - they are all gone - and is as he is.

Comes a time the baggage is all that is left. The history of my life. The archive of uncompleted projects, undigested books, unwashed dishes. Half done, they linger on, filling my residence with a sense of self and purpose.

Yet now I am more.

Begin the ending of the past.

A now-gone dear friend of almost 40 years loved to fill a home with empty spaces. The only purpose of things was to define spaces. Of such is beauty born.

My own life principle is that spaces need to be filled with things. Of such is function born. Even for an object just to sit there and be beautiful gives it a function. Space allows it.

So my home is overfull. Comes a time.

I wander from room to room looking in each for one thing to change, one thing to complete, one thing to throw away. Slowly the undone projects cluster together. In the kitchen on a shelf sits a book whose cover needs gluing, some sun-glasses which periodically come unglued, and the bottle of glue, all awaiting a moment.

All my things once had purpose. Now almost none of them do.

I try letting form follow function. Do my thing and let the past become the lumber from which the future takes its solidity. The past is, after all, all I have. So I turn old dead floor lamps into plant stands. Boxes of books and old clothes let me wall off a recording studio.

I have little boxes of pretty stones, picked up from the ground as souvenirs over the years, mementos of forgotten places and times. I did this as a child when we last went to the little church I grew up in, before the time of wanderings began. I took some stones from the gravel by the door. I would always have them, to have and to hold. I have seven or eight boxes.

When my mother died, I took her box of stones and emptied them from a bridge into a rocky creek in Massachusetts leading to the sea so they would eventually return to the source of it all. Her stones were in envelopes, carefully labelled.

But I have forgotten where mine came from. Now their worth is just that they are pretty stones. I have not figured out how to involve them in my ongoing life. Put them in the fish tank?

Comes a time to drop the traces.

Cheap Eats

Been baking bread - sourdough. Make a pound loaf for fifty cents. Easy to do, but it takes forever to rise.

Yesterday, there was some cottage cheese on sale for $2 a pound at a time when ordinary cheese costs $6 a pound. So I bought some, drained it in an old t-shirt, and now hope for mozzarella.

Progress reports as progress develops.

An End To SADness

Seasonal Affective Disorder had me laying back this year, not packing Christmas presents, unmotivated, doing nothing as the latest possible shipping date drew closer and closer.

SAD snuck up so slowly and easily that I didn't realize it was there. Just that it was really hard to get out of bed in the morning. I didn't want to do anything, just vegetate.

Seasonal Affective Disorder. When the length of the day diminishes, the body shuts down. Hibernation. It can happen to the best of us, and to you and me, too.

The solution is simple, cheap, and very pleasant. I hold a little desk lamp up to my eyes, eyelids closed, and move it around, letting light come in from all angles. My inner puppy melts in the warmth. The more I do it, the more the eyes relax, the more they soak up the glow.

Remember what it is like to lay on the beach in the sun, soaking up the rays? Eyes closed, the mind fills with the glow. This is the experience I give myself.

A minute or so twice a day, and I am happily involved in the world again.

The Liquid Supper Diet

Eat supper earlier and earlier, until you're eating around five PM.

This lets the stomach do its business before you go to sleep and you will sleep better.

If you become hungry in the evening, drink a glass of skim milk, or two or three. No solids. As the diet progresses, you will find it easier and easier to get up in the night.

There will not be fat molecules wandering around in the blood at night looking for a home. The heart will work better. As the arteries serving the brain clear, the brain may start to think more clearly.

Drink a glass of skim milk for breakfast and you may not need food until lunch. The wish for breakfast may not appear until you are truly hungry.

The Romaine Lettuce Diet

Go to the grocery store and buy three large heads of Romaine lettuce.

Every day before you eat breakfast, eat three large leaves. Or four or five smaller ones.

There's no need to waste time making a salad. Rinse a leaf under the faucet, fold it and roll it until it looks like a Chinese egg roll, then eat it as finger food.

After you've lettuced, then eat breakfast.

That's all you have to do.

Cup Cakes

Cup cake. A late-night muffin you mix and nuke.

Fill a microwave cup 3/4 full of cake mix, muffin mix or cornbread mix.

Turn the water faucet on so that only the tiniest dribble is coming out. Pass the cup back and forth under the faucet and capture a tiny amount of water.

Stir the mix and water. As the mix eats up the water, add more. You want a final consistency somewhere between taffy and pancake batter. A harder consistency tends to rise less. If the dough is stiff, it can nuke at high temperatures, boil down the sugars, and come out like a candy bar. If the dough is more liquid, the result will be a cake or a pudding.

Put the cup on a saucer to catch overflow, nuke for two minutes, and you're done.

Instant muffin, fresh from the oven.


Variations -

- Egg muffin - Start with an egg and a tablespoon of water, add mix and stir. Comes out very spongy and springy. This is a great way to get some protein cooked quickly without the usual grease.

- Banana muffin - Start with a banana, perhaps a very old banana. Mush it down into a bowl until it becomes gooey. Add cinnamon and spice cake mix or bran muffin mix and stir it into the goo. As you stir more and more, the batter will become more and more liquid. Set the bowl on a plate to catch any overflow and nuke for three minutes.

- Candy bar - Start with a quarter cup of Alaga syrup and add water only if it's absolutely necessary. Alaga sugars up the mix so much that it will boil and make candy during the baking. After baking, stir and stir it as it cools, and it will become pliable. Turn it out onto an oiled place and shape it into Tootsie Rolls or miniature loaves which can be sliced.

- Candy bar with jelly beans. Stir them in. Slice like a fruitcake. Dip in chocolate.

Overcook it and you can pull out a filling. Be warned.

- Rich, cheesy muffin - Add a quarter cup of feta cheese to the mix. You won't know it's there, except for the amazing richness of the result.

- Rich, cheesy cornbread muffin - Add a quarter cup of strong cheddar cheese.

- Chopped fruit muffin - just what its name suggests.

- Veggie muffin - olives and onions in cornbread. Maybe some rehydrated dried tomato. Oregano, cumin, even a touch of curry powder could enhance it.

- Quadruple chocolate muffin - chocolate cake or muffin mix, a tsp or two of cocoa powder, some Hershey bar fragments, and chocolate Slim-Fast.


The recipes above are given as an adjoint to the Romaine Lettuce Diet and are not to be taken separately.

Christmas Coffee

I love coffee. The other night without thinking, I made decaf in a cup that had a bit of Sugar Plum Spice Holiday Herb Tea remaining in it.

Holy Maloney! It tasted wonderful. It may have something to do with all the spices in the tea, which include cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, natural plum, rosehips and hibiscus. Just a possibility.

So tonight I made a cup of the tea and put three teaspoons into a cup of coffee. Same effect.

Not sure what a teabag would do to a coffee urn. The tea is from Celestial Seasonings.

Savor Serenity

What goes around comes around, faster and faster these days.

In a cybernetic control system, the reduction in turnaround time reduces slack in the system and makes it more responsive.

In politics...

Savor serenity.

A Water Glass Keeps You Wet

Every now and then, it's nice to have just a sip of water. I fill two water glasses. Keep one on the kitchen stove, the other in the living room. An end to thirst is just a step away and doesn't require fixing anything.

The Acid Never Hits The Stomach

If you love coffee, then you may live on the near edge of stomach distress. "Can I stand one more?" is the question you ask when you're about as acidic as you dare to be.

Rinse a small pop bottle and put a teaspoon of baking soda in it. Fill with water. Taste it. It should be just a little "salty".

Put a little glurp in your coffee before you drink it, and the acid will be gone before the coffee hits the stomach.

Three-In-One Oil Cures Toenail Fungus

It's true. Maybe fatal, but true. Try a drop or two today.

It took the oil about three months of weekly oilings to rid my big toe of the fungus that had detached half the nail. The fungus needed air, and the oil wouldn't allow it.

In a convenient dispenser. Olive oil may work just as well, but you don't get the cute dispenser.

Reason For Being

This blog is to record things I notice as I get older that might be useful.