The reader may have noticed that I am no longer posting on Tuesdays and not until afternoon on Wednesday. There are likewise gaps on some weekends. I have had a couple calls and texts from concerned readers that the Dindus might have arranged a hoodrat ambush for me.
Never fear. I have been sending the night in three different outlying locations, now that I possess my own infernal device. I originally wished to only write at my desk, in the ghetto, above the gables of the storied old plantation house, treating it like a job. However, my mother and aunt are growing old and lonely for a male family member to fill in for Grandpa Kern’s sage role, or drinking beer and making pithy comments concerning the latest TV news, as well as a veiled yearning for a protective personage as their deep suburban refuge is now being prowled by entry level Dindu infiltration bots.
I was able to afford a tiny, ugly laptop with one of my Amazon checks—before they switched to electronic payment and the money is being lost in the ether with neither they or the bank knowing anything—so that I might write while on the Big Sky Safari next month with Ishmael and Shayne.
I could not afford virus protection for this thing and am staying off line, just using it to load flash drives and upload the content when I get home, thus the lapse in posts and clusters of seemingly L. Ron Hubbard [the guy used to kill a typewriter every couple of days] output.
The Ghetto Grocer Kindle Edition
Dr. Jim:
I remember my Uncle John, who was an Eastern Shore boy. My Aunt (no slouch herself) would complain about his TV watching habits. "He just sits there, and whatever is on, he keeps saying (E. Shore accent) "He's a liar!" and "That's a damn lie!"
I thought that was alternately hysterical and just awful.
Like my Father, I now believe he was not only pretty astute, but way ahead of his time.
Sometimes I wonder about what they'd think about all the nonsense these days. Then and H.L. Mencken....
Sic transit gloriae Baltimoreous, y'all.
Convert it to a Linux laptop. Hardly any viruses are written for Linux.
I have good success with the free versions of AVG and Avira antivirus, when used with SpyBot Search & Destroy. Not perfect, but good enough that I've only needed MalwareBytes a couple of times, and only in the past year while still not yet at Win10. Since going to Win10, with Avira and Spybot, all good.
The biggest protection possible is to turn off scripting. Scripting is a type of computer programming language. Unfortunately Microsoft embedded it into the damn operating system. It's the reason that you can go to a web and a picture can install programs. I can only guess why they did such a stupid thing. As I don't know exactly what version you have I can only give loose guidelines. Go to internet explorer and open it, Go to the header named "tools" go down the page and open "internet options". A window will open. Go to the tab on the top called "security". There are several zones there. Internet, local internet, trusted zones and untrusted zones. It should have "Internet" highlighted. It the one you use most of the time. You see the little security level selector bar? It's probably set too medium high. The simplest way to change it for the better is ram that baby all the way to the top(High) and save. Even that is really not good enough though so the big time safe masher settings are on the same page called custom. Hit the custom button and turn everything you can find either off(disable) or (ask me). Anything that says script or runtime components you don't want to run. It's a Godamn crime this stuff is even on there. The only thing I can see you need to leave on is "Downloads>file download" to (enable) because you do want to download files.
After you do this DO NOT USE INTERNET EXPLOYER. Use firefox and use the add-on "noscript". Open "noscript" options and turn off all javascript and all other scripts. There's a little box at the bottom of your page when using noscript where you can temporarily enable scripts for a single page if you need to. You can also save that setting by making it permanent. You're set.