Pariah's Ponderings

This is going to be a 'Douche of the Day' award post that I usually do on my Wordpress blog . I was a happy Photobucket user for 11 years.  That's a long time to stick with a service so they were obviously a good one.  I was completely happy with the services provided on my free account and a couple of times, I made use of the print store in order to make custom gifts for loved ones for various occasions. Then all of a sudden, in 2017, they start sending me nagware. For those unfamiliar, nagware consists of popups/emails/messages etc that 'nag' you to buy their product. It's irritating, true, but not a deal breaker since I had a free account.  I just unsubscribed to the nagmails and just put up with it on the site. Then, however, Photobucket decided to do something I consider to be truly despicable. They made it to where you CANNOT download your photo albums (for backup or for account changes).  They actually REMOVED the download album links.  Why is that p...

Most people that use Windows tend to just use Windows Explorer as their file manager. A vast number of people likely don't even realize that there are other options.  Windows Explorer is painfully limited in features, especially lacking the tabs that 95% of file managers utilize.  In my line of work, I have to compare, browse, edit, move, delete and rename vast numbers of files.  Windows Explorer just can't handle the task. I ended up using FreeCommander file manager, which had all the features I was looking for with extensive customization options for the user interface and a built in viewer that could be used inside the window I was working on.  That was actually the most difficult feature to find as I discovered later. After a while though, I became very frustrated with FreeCommander's 32 bit free version.  It became slow and often froze.  So I decided to comparison shop, so to speak.  My requirements were few but necessary: I had to be able to c...

It's been an unsettling week as once again, some post high school dropout with a chip on his soldier and a too-easily acquired gun decides to end lives.  This time, some loser douche decided to invade a church and kill several people who weren't pale enough for him.  This has led, most unfortunately to a whole lot of sheeple deciding to blame everything in the world, except for this young guy. What some people just can't seem to wrap around their heads is that sometimes people are just born wrong.  This guy probably has instances as far back as early childhood of things that should have alerted someone to the fact that he's cracked in the head.  But the sheeple persist. So, now we have this movement going on called #takedowntheflag, where civil authorities are being besieged by people in droves demanding that Confederate flags from the Civil War be taken down from government buildings. Apparently, that was what set the guy off.  A flag.  No, that's just wha...

On my Windows 7 computer, the one I work from, I need a good, fast reliable browser as part of my workflow.  I recently got rid of one that I really loved for a while, called Torch Browser .  Torch has a lot of great extras, such as music and video players, torrent downloader, facelift for facebook; basically it's great for play.  Don't get me wrong, it was great but my focus on this computer is productivity and I need a web browser to match.  I like using Chrome based browsers as well as Firefox, but I hate having Google involved in everything (like this blog *grumble*) so I go for alternative browsers based on Chrome, minus the Google.  (Sorry, Google dear, but you brought this on yourself)  I was a rabid fan of Opera prior to what I like to call the Operocalypse, where Opera gave up everything that made it stand out from the rest (and made it the best) to yet another Chrome clone.  I have it, out of habit, but only use it on my most secure sites; it...

As noted in my other blog, Thoughts From The Outside , I went on a all-natural mission to detoxify my life.  In part this change came about due to my dad's bout with cancer, but also it was something I have wanted to do for a long time and that was just my extra boost.  I started reading first about the 'no-poo' movement, which involves all natural alternatives to washing one's hair without using commercial shampoos, which are laden with cancer causing ingredients.  After several tries of various things, all of which are chronicled in my other blog, Thoughts From The Outside , I settled on one company for all of my all natural needs. I discovered a wonderful, family owned company during my lengthy search for quality, effective all natural products.  They are called Chagrin Valley Soap and Salve Company , located in Cleveland Ohio.  They sell lots of amazing, all natural products like (obviously) soap and salve, also shampoo bars, deodorant, lotions and lip bal...

Everyone has something they are good at; I'm a writer.  I have been hired as a freelance writer on multiple occasions, to the benefit of both parties.  I have written many different types of custom writing for various clients, depending on their needs and my knowledge of the subject they need written about.  Sometimes, though, after a long while of not doing much on the writing front, my skills can get somewhat rusty.  Enter every writers nightmare: writer's block.  Sometimes inspiration can be difficult to come by so it's necessary to have several sources at hand to give a boost when needed.  If ever I get stuck on a particularly technical piece or with a subject I know little about, I can always get a professional to write my essay .  I can always turn to writers with advanced postgraduate degrees and professional business experience to help me get a paper that I can use as a source for my work.  It's nice to know that I don't have to worry abo...

For those random people having random issues with logins lately..it may not be your Linux distro.  Apparently a nasty bug has creeped into ext4, which is causing all kinds of mayhem.  Make sure when installing a new distro, you mount your /home directory as something besides ext4 in order to keep your data safe.  See this link , scroll down to the Section entitled Tips and Tricks (by Robert Storey) to see more of what's going on, in case you are affected.  Not a lot of people are at this point, supposedly just randomly.  The chief maintainer of ext4 is working on a solution now.

For those random people having random issues with logins lately..it may not be your Linux distro.  Apparently a nasty bug has creeped into ext4, which is causing all kinds of mayhem.  Make sure when installing a new distro, you mount your /home directory as something besides ext4 in order to keep your data safe.  See this link , scroll down to the Section entitled Tips and Tricks (by Robert Storey) to see more of what's going on, in case you are affected.  Not a lot of people are at this point, supposedly just randomly.  The chief maintainer of ext4 is working on a solution now.

There is one chore in all my world that ranks right up there with going to the laundromat as "things I hate to do the most" and that would be shopping.  I admit, I'm a girl and I don't like to shop.  Unless it's rummaging, which doesn't qualify as shopping in my view.  Every so often, though, I have to work up the will to go to actual stores and hunt around for a pair of pants to wear at work.  Dockers, a brand introduced by Levi Strauss & Co., has been providing classy jeans and work pants since 1986. With fits ranging from Classic to Slim, there is a pair for everyone. Check some different styles out here !  I'm just not a fan of going from store to store, trying on pants. Every time I do this, I end up feeling crappy about my figure.  I don't have a butt, my legs are too skinny and my waist is far too wide for the rest of my little self.  Therefore, as one might imagine, shopping for pants is not a happy time for me.  Shirts aren't so...

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Recently, my boss told me that her son is about to have his very first birthday party. I am amazed at all the work this seems to involve. Not only do you have to get the must have presents perfect for the boy who is about to turn one year old, but also there is a lot of thought involved about how to plan a party where lots of other small children are going to be. Most of them will be between one and two years old. This can be pretty chaotic if you ask me! Another thing I noticed is that in addition to gifts, a lot of attention is being paid to preparations for games and invitations. I guess it is pretty important to keep that many small children occupied and happy, unless you want to hear a lot of crying and screaming! I did notice that my boss spent a lot of time picking out just the right birthday invitations for her son's party. When she asked me for help in choosing a design, I was happy to help. I got pretty hooked on going through them all, trying to find just the pe...

Guest post written by Mimi Lawless We don't have a whole lot of room in our kitchen. So we decided to bump out the room a little bit in a big remodel. That's giving us all kinds of room for things in our kitchen that I've never thought that we would have room for. But that doesn't mean that I haven't been thinking of all of those things to add in my kitchen and making mental notes. One of the things that I was thinking about is some kind of wine storage in the kitchen. While I was looking for some info on that, I saw some information on sears cabinet refacing and I added that to the list of all of hte things that we're going to do in the ktichen. I think that we're going to do with a little wine fridge right beside of our regular fridge so that everything will be the perfect temperature and keep from taking up extra space in our regular fridge, which is a bit of a problem now.

Guest post by Jewel Cole My boyfriend and I thought it would be nice to move into an artsy neighborhood, but the more time we spend here, the more we realize we totally don’t fit in. At first, the street festivals and art shows were fun, but now we are just sick of all of the hipsters and crowds that come in from other neighborhoods. There is never any parking on the weekends, and we always wake up to garbage in the streets that doesn’t get cleaned up for days. Sometimes there are positive new things that happen like farmers markets and animal adoption events, but it is just exhausting. I get angry at how people behave and have realized that maybe we are too old to live in a trendy area. We decided that we are just going to spend more time at home instead of trying to be involved in all the activities. We signed up for a directv promo, and we hope that will keep us entertained until we save enough to buy a place in a different neighborhood. We don’t want to move right no...

Guest post written by Natalie Rickman I'm at the point where I really want to make my home my own. I spent a lot of money on it so that I can actually call it my own and now's the time to decorate it to wear it actually looks like a place that I would live. I really love retro style and I thought that it would be a fun idea to buy a bar cart to use in there. When I was online looking around for a reasonably affordable bar cart, which can be kind of hard to track down, I came across some info on Sears cabinet refacing . I really hate my kitchen right now and would love to give it a makeover, so I'm going to start there. I foudn this one amazing looking bar cart that was exactly what I had imagined in my mind. It was a little more expensive than I had wanted to pay, but I found a coupon code for it and bought it with that. No turning back now!

I'm currently downloading the latest offering from Linux Mint 12, 64 bit with KDE.  Normally this wouldn't be that big of a deal news-wise but with the fiasco known as Gnome 3, everything has been turned upside down as Clem and the gang try to keep their loyal fan base from scattering to the four winds as the majority of Linux users have been suddenly left out in the cold.  Lefebvre shows his usual genius by creating a brand new desktop that has gotten rave reviews even in its beta form.  Other Linux users, such as myself, have suddenly been turning to other desktop environments in the wake of the chaos caused by Gnome's sudden and intense desire to copy Unity desktop which, outside of newbs, is useless for most end users.  Add to that the new Gnome project policy of "we don't care what our users want" and its no surprise that even the most loyal Gnome 2.x users are now looking at KDE in a more "how you doin'" kind of way.  In about an hour I wil...

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