Namecheap, the Worst Web Hosting Company

Namecheap, Inc. just sent me an invoice for--well, I don't know what. They expect me to pay a bunch of money because, I guess, they need money. I haven't hosted with them in years and my domain is no longer registered with them. I'm not surprised their morals are amiss. Namecheap is possibly the worst web host in existence. Their service was lousy, with unexplained bizarre errors, and their tech support, which I frequently had to use, was foreign, incompetent, unresponsive, and uncaring. I was never so happy as when I abandoned my Namecheap account and moved to a different host, even though it cost me financially to do so. Namecheat is more like it.

The host I recommend is Bluehost, a class act all around. They may be Mormon-owned for all I know, but they do web hosting right, and on the extremely rare occasion that I have needed their tech support, I have talked to real, live American techies on the telephone who know what they are doing. I've never been talking to a Bluehost representative without feeling like they are intelligent and, perhaps more importantly, care. I've used Bluehost for many years. I don't know of any other web host that is as good as they are, although it's true I haven't tried many. Bluehost is even recommended by Wordpress, which I think is very impressive in itself. Their founder runs the entire company on Mac or Linux, scorning Microsoft. I've followed his blog off and on through the years. I doubt we would agree on politics, but as far as computers go, I think we are in agreement.

For the past couple days, my site on Bluehost has become inaccessible around midnight every day without explanation and stays slow until the morning. So I can't recommend Bluehost without reservation. I need to become more cautious about my enthusiasm for things. It seems like the very moment that I praise something, that's when I discover its shortcoming. In the case of Bluehost, I discovered their nightly slowdown about the same time that I renewed for two years. However, I think that this may have been a temporary glitch, possibly due to Wordpress attackers.

If this is the only post any visitor to my blog ever reads, then so much the better. Namecheap caused me hardship with their unexplained errors and incompetent service.

7/30/2013 Update: This post against Namecheap has been attacked on over ten separate occasions by spam comments linking to malware sites that try to infect people's computers with viruses. My policy now is that whenever that happens, this post will be updated to be the front-page, very first post; or else I may post another message about Namecheap and its sleazy, unethical business practices. There's no way that Namecheap can get out of their well-deserved poor reputation. They are going to have to live with it, no matter how many spammers they hire.

Project Runway and RuPaul's Drag Race

There are two television shows that are must-see TV for geeks like me--"RuPaul's Drag Race" and "Project Runway." I grew up without the slightest interest in clothes. I think I have improved a great deal. Shows that deal with fashion are highly educational for those who have little natural inclination toward fashion. I find my awareness of clothes has increased, and I am more likely to "dress up" than I ever was in the past. I told my partner the other day, "I want to look like Tim Gunn," the mentor on "Project Runway" that is one of my favorite television personalities. He seems to me dignified, intelligent, perceptive, and seems to have a warm and affectionate side as well.

Another area where I've made great strides is public speaking. I'm not a good charlatan. I need to know a subject well before I speak. I hate faking and I hate fakers. However, if I do know a subject well, then fear melts away, and I transform into a dragon. I did a speech on a disease not long ago in front of a group of nursing students. I had researched the disease well and rehearsed my speech about a dozen times. For me, preparation is essential. I like to feel that I am not wasting my time or anyone else's. The speech was well-received and some people told me that mine was the best of the lot.

Knowledge makes a big difference for me. I think that I would have made a good college professor if I had long ago chosen a different route, abandoning computer technology and pursuing instead a doctorate. Technology is a fickle field where only the last two years matter. I never expected that one day all my knowledge would be deemed obsolete and my aptitude not given a moment's consideration. There are zero opportunities, and no employer cares what one has learned or can learn. They would as soon hire workers from India or China or not hire in America at all and simply invest in overseas operations.

Old Books

I like old books. If the author is dead, that to me is a recommendation. If a book has survived its author and is still being sold, then it probably has merit.

I don't like most news magazines. Someone bought me a year's subscription to TIME, which is one of the worst, with many charts, graphs, numbers, and random facts, and little or nothing of any interest. I can consume a TIME magazine in about sixty seconds, and I always throw it in the wastebasket afterwards, because it is never worth saving.

I read Socrates just about every day. I don't mind reading the same passages. It is better to reread Socrates a thousand times than to read TIME magazine once. His ideas inspire reflection and relate to many things under the Sun. I find myself agreeing with Socrates more and more, but still I disagree with some of his most radical propositions, for instance that all bodily desires are to be ignored or minimized in sacrifice to the greater goal of philosophy. He conjures up this idea of the philosopher as a monastic scholar who eats simple food, say porridge and onions, just enough to survive, wears simple clothes, lives in poverty by choice, and finds no value in any of the nicer things in life, what ordinary men regard as pleasures. The philosopher instead looks forward to death, when he will be reunited with the gods and with spiritual beings and achieve his ultimate goal, which is acquisition of the truth. That to me seems rather unpleasant and extreme. I do think life has a purpose and so does pleasure. When available and morally acceptable, pleasure should be enjoyed rather than scorned. I don't share Socrates' dismissal of the senses, but he is correct in pointing out that the senses do mislead us when we are searching for truth, and that the most powerful deductive tools make use of pure reason. Indeed, I think that is how the astrophysicists go about things--by using mathematical theories.

Socrates is a dear old heart, cheerfully anticipating his death. At first I felt pity for Socrates and annoyance at the injustice of the Athenians in condemning their sincere and honest critic. But I am persuaded by Socrates to forgive his accusers. One can't help but envy such a civilized exit from this world--surrounded by loving and loyal friends--knowing the precise day and hour and manner of one's passing--feeling no pain at all. Upon reflection, his was the very best of all deaths. Many humans die in an abrupt manner, with their financial and social affairs in disarray, and even the rich and intelligent are not immune to this fate, as I have observed. Many humans die young, before their time, whereas Socrates died in his seventies. Many die in pain or alone or unloved, whereas Socrates suffered none of that. In the final analysis, one cannot pity him. His accusers are condemned by history, and Socrates is exonerated and immortalized.

I do not know if his individual consciousness still exists, but I rather doubt it. Socrates believed he would still be around, somewhere, in some shape or form. I just don't feel we humans are important or good or powerful enough to escape annihilation. Death seems final to me, and the finality seems just and equitable. Yet perhaps Socrates was right in one sense, if we are all a part of a whole. For if the universe is one, and I think it may be, and the astrophysicists say we all derive from star dust, then individual consciousness is beside the point, because there is one consciousness only, the greater one that transcends all, and our individuality is a kind of illusion.

College is a Waste of Time and Money

I am always surprised to hear about the enrollment statistics at local colleges. As college is deemed worthless by employers, why do so many people still enroll, incurring debt in the process? It is as though they and their parents assume that nothing has changed since 1940, and a college degree remains the stepladder into the middle class. The reality is quite different now. There are a lot of people with Bachelor's and even Master's degrees that cannot find anything other than minimum-wage jobs. In reality, there is more to be gained by working at McDonalds for four years than incurring debt for four years. At least at McDonalds, no debt will be incurred, and some amount of money will be earned. There is always the possibility of becoming a store manager as well. I think the real reason kids still go to college is that an expectation has been to baked into their minds by our culture. There remains this almost religious awe of getting a college degree. After all, that may be how their parents moved up the ladder, back in the day when the economy was working. Graduation into the world of highly educated unemployment or under-employment or menial labor will come as a rude shock.

Forced Moves in Chess

Forced moves have strong appeal to beginners. I have noticed they will always check, when they see a check, or choose another type of forcing move, when there is one. I smile when a novice checks me and allows me time to improve my King's position. Analysis is essential to determining whether such moves are beneficial. All forced lines must be analyzed to some kind of conclusion.

Some people are faster at analysis, because they have innate talent. It is often not possible to defeat a player with a faster "processor," so to speak, except in a long or correspondence game. I consider myself slow at analysis, and that is why I prefer long games to blitz. I do not think it is possible to improve much at blitz. One has the hardware or one doesn't. I do think it is possible to get better at long games, in which both players have adequate time to prioritize and then analyze the possible moves.

Is the Supernatural Natural?

I am most tempted to speculate upon the supernatural, that is, magic and ESP and telepathy and gods, when I listen to astrophysicists talk about string theory, time, the multiverse, what happened before the Big Bang, and wormholes. Then I wonder whether all of the tales we have heard are false, or if some of them have a basis in something that is just now only dimly understood.

Lately, when I close my eyes at night, I think back to the prophesy I heard a long time ago that seems to have come true in many respects. It was not a good prophesy on the whole. I wish I had not heard it. I remember asking whether it were possible to defy fate, and the answer I received was in the negative. There is something irresponsible, I think, in a seer telling a person of a future that is inevitable. With great power comes great responsibility. I wonder whether she really saw what she said she saw or if she were merely speculating based upon intuition and intelligent perception. If she did see truly, then how and by what means? I asked this exact question at the time of the reading and received nothing but mumbo-jumbo for an answer.

The NOVA documentaries I watched over the last several nights explained several theories and hypotheses circulating in the world of astrophysics. One of the biggest discoveries that has been made, albeit one that is "old," dating back to Einstein, is that time is relative. Space and time are related, forming the concept known by Einstein as spacetime. I get dizzy thinking about these things. They are so far beyond my comprehension. I can only just grasp the surface of the basic ideas. There are many implications deriving from the relativity of space and time. Thus, my entire lifespan can elapse in a single moment--say, sixty seconds--of an extraterrestrial being living at a vast distance away from me. Therefore, if there were any means whatsoever for communication, images, or knowledge to be transmitted to and from that consciousness to, say, a human being living in my time and sitting beside me holding my hand, then that might be the scientific way for the seer to see. Mumbo-jumbo, or magic, in the common sense of the word, need play no role. Science suffices for an explanation that passes muster with the modern mind. Much of advanced science is as good as magic for most of us, anyway. How many of us could build a computer from scratch or, for that matter, an automobile? Observe that quantum mechanics speculates that teleporting between vast distances is possible. If this is so, why cannot a thought, word or image be transmitted from one brain to another? Would that not be easier?

Speed Up Windows Backup

Backing up Windows is essential, because forty forevers are needed to get a Windows install back up to snuff. I used to use Clonezilla to clone my Windows install, but Clonezilla is quite limited for use with a failing hard drive. There is the "rescue" mode, which I used, but I found that the display suffered severe corruption due to I/O errors that displayed rather untidily wherever. Apparently, Clonezilla only updates five numerical values during the cloning process. The labels for these values are not updated, so any errors that pop up simply result in a mess. I did not like looking at that, because in order to interpret the display, I had to google Clonezilla and find a screenshot of what the screen is supposed to look like during ordinary operation. The Clonezilla web site does not offer such a screenshot, I guess because it was deemed unimportant. I tried the very latest version of Clonezilla Debian and Clonezilla Ubuntu, and both had the same behavior. Compounding the problem, I noticed that the "time remaining" value was constantly increasing, rather than decreasing. Of course I do not wish for the cloning process to last all my days, so I aborted the process by hitting the power button, which to my knowledge is the only way to regain control. I think in the future I will only recommend Clonezilla for drives free of I/O errors, and suggest that a drive scan be performed prior to attempting to use the program.

I resorted to using the Windows Backup in Windows 7. I did not have high expectations, but actually I have found it is fairly good, although simple-minded. The display does not get corrupted, which is nice, and what is even nicer is that I can continue using the computer while it is backing things up. The one problem I ran into is that by accepting Windows Backup defaults, again the backing up takes forever. It is much slower than it should be. Googling for help, I found that many users complain about the same problem. I made a simple observation that I am sure has occurred to others. First of all, Windows Backup attempts to compress files, which is often a bad idea, because some files are already compressed, such as jpegs and many popular video and music formats. For some users, such files comprise the overwhelming majority of the space used on their hard drive. This I believe is the main reason that many users complain about slow backup. I do not think Windows Backup is intelligent enough to skip compression for already compressed file formats. For the sake of performance, it should be storing these files, rather than attempting compression. Instead, it is attempting to compress them further, wasting time, because little or nothing will be gained in space. Once a file is compressed, it is impossible to compress it further without using a more efficient algorithm, and I doubt that Windows Backup uses the most efficient algorithm in the world. I do not know why Microsoft went this route.

The solution to slow backup in Windows Backup, in such cases as described above, is to pick and choose the directories to be backed up. The video, music, and picture directories should be copied using Windows Explorer to the backup drive. Windows Backup should not touch them, because that will only slow the backup process down a great deal. Where Windows Backup excels is at compressing all of the system files, documents and data files and areas that the user cannot easily access. I let Windows Backup handle all of that for me. It is actually a pleasant little utility that seems a lot nicer to use than certain alternatives, but like all tools, it does have its limitations.

The NSA Spying Scandal

Each new revelation of NSA spying on people all over the world is a reminder of the type of people who have power in Washington, D.C. The warlords have great power of technology at their disposal, due to plundering the taxpayers and buying enormous amounts of hardware and hiring brilliant technology workers. But the warlords lack morality. They only care about their narrow, selfish interests. The ones that wrap themselves in the cloth of Jesus employ the ancient ruse of piety that deceives many people into thinking that they do have a moral compass, when they don't. At least one of their brilliant technology workers demonstrated that he possessed what they lack, and they hate him for it. Their wickedness exposed, they are wrathful, because they realize that their pretences have less power to persuade.

Great technology paired with low morality is the dilemma of the modern age. The moral aspect of the human species has not really evolved much since the bad old days. I think that the greatest surprise for people of my generation is that nuclear weapons were not used since the end of WW2. I would not rule out nuclear war, however. Nations do not always intend to go to war. War just happens. It is indeed possible to have a nuclear war by accident. I think that over time, if the nations of the world do not become moral, but remain as they are, then one day the world will win the lottery ticket for nuclear war.

In regard to spying, the United States has set a bad moral example for the other world powers. American power fades due to our leaders, the mighty warlords, who think constant warfare is the only necessity and that everything else can be ignored, delayed or mishandled. They have botched everything but a handful of overseas conflicts that benefited America very little or not at all. Out of arrogance, American leaders refused to draw any lesson from the Viet Nam conflict. They refused to learn from history. They believe that knowledge is unimportant, suitable only for academics, except where technology is concerned, because technology has direct military applications, and through the military, they think they can force their will on others.

While American power wanes, the power of China increases. A day will arrive, and I think it is not far away, when China, not America, calls the shots, both figurative and literal. Will China be moral? No, China will play "follow the leader" and do as we did and much, much worse. I do not look for China to set itself above us and be a shining example of morality, because China opts for whatever is expedient, never what is right, and their leaders are outright thieves, tyrants and hypocrites. So China will do much worse. Only fear holds China in check for now, but fear is on the wane in direct correlation with U.S. power. And Russia will do what it has always done, proving that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Close-Up of a Tick

I enjoyed this article in the New York Times for the close-up of a tick, which shows that the tick's mouth looks like a ratchet.

I first encountered ticks on my pet cat when I was a boy. Back then, I used to pry them off with pliers, which seemed like the only way to get them off. They were already engorged with blood at that point, and some were half the size of a dime. The cat seemed cooperative and did not appear to mind the procedure, which led me to suspect that the tick emitted some kind of localized anaesthetic.

State-by-State Air Quality Data

I just discovered airnow.gov, which I suspect is another good idea from the Democrats. On that government-run site, air quality is clearly displayed on a map for all of the fifty states. I think it is very useful for anyone that might be considering relocating, but particularly those who suffer from asthma. I have noticed that living in one of the states with "moderate" air quality is bad for asthma sufferers.

Violence

I'm one of the lucky ones on this planet. Violence tends to be something I read about in the paper rather than experience in daily life. The last time I experienced violence was long ago in high school. Back then, I was a victim. I had an incompetent teacher in gym class who did not have a conscience. There were many hurts that I received because of him. When I was fourteen, I used to consider the possibility of vengeance. In our modern world, vengeance can be easily obtained and does not require any skill, training or even maturity. Vengeance has a point-and-click interface. It is too easy. That is why certain headlines one reads about are not that surprising or uncommon, although they are sad, yes, sad to me, even if I understand more than I want to understand. I did not consider my old gym teacher to have more importance than any other cockroach I might encounter. I didn't step on and crush him, because I did not want to get my shoe dirty. Clean shoes are more important to me than stepping on cockroaches. There will always be cockroaches. One has to live one's life and forge a life that is about more than just cockroaches.

Impulses occur to many people, sometimes primitive impulses. I wonder whether it is so that everyone has thought of killing someone else at some point in time. Maybe that is not true of everyone. I have met many people in my life who seem exceptionally good. I think they have more goodness in them than I do. I am in awe of them and think they are holy, so I want to do things for them. I cannot say that they have ever thought of harming anyone else. I am not sure.

Certainly by listening to the lyrics of popular songs, watching television shows and reading books, it is clear that the thought of doing violence unto others is not uncommon in the general population. Some people lack sufficient impulse control. They would not make good chess players. They do not pause to consider all of the consequences of their actions. What good fortune I have, because I have good impulse control. But not everybody does.

I'm reminded of my good fortune in living a life free of violence whenever I read about the situations in the Middle East or Africa or read about the deeds of desperate criminals. For me, local crime hits home in a way that the conflict in Syria cannot. Where local crime is concerned, I know the city, I know the streets, I may have met some of the victim(s) before, and I may have even heard the sirens or moved my car aside in order to let emergency vehicles pass.

Some people are natural criminals. That is, they were born that way and don't seem very capable of doing anything else. Or maybe they are capable of doing something else, but we have not discovered the secret yet to directing their energies into more productive lines of behavior. It is too much to ask of society, at this point, to expect it to find the perfect answer for everybody. Society has many problems that remain unsolved. Those who create new problems are put away, either in prison or the cemetery. Even if a violent criminal is successful at one or more heists, I would not envy such a person. They are bound to get caught eventually, because law enforcement is the most advanced it has ever been. The money and manpower available to law enforcement in the U.S. is staggering. Any person, whether criminal or not, would have the odds stacked against him at the very outset of any endeavor that aroused the slightest suspicion.

Last night, I thought to myself how lucky I am compared to the criminal I read about in the local newspaper, who has been apprehended and is facing a sentence of well over a hundred years. Yet I suppose even he is luckier than some, because he did not kill or hurt anyone, though not for lack of trying. His was an old-fashioned crime that reminded me of the movies I used to watch in the 1970s. He was in a car chase from the police and fired a gun many times. Fortunately, he missed. But that will be attributed only to his being a poor shot. I don't think that he will get out of prison until he is very old, if ever. I cannot say that I have any sympathy for him, although I do feel pity.

From the documentaries I have watched, it seems to me that the worst thing about prison is not violence, but mere boredom, the monotony and irritation of seeing the same faces, the same clothes, the same building every day, all year around, possibly for life. I think prisoners resort to violence due to boredom. I suppose the only escape from boredom in prison would be found in reading books, if the warden is kind enough to permit well-written books, but it seems many prisoners are not that keen on reading.

Beyond the near-certain prospect of consequences for a crime, there is the even more important philosophical aspect to consider. The thought of harming others is repugnant to anyone with a philosophical viewpoint. I think conscience can prove an even greater consequence than law in such cases, at least for those individuals with a fully functioning conscience. I have met individuals that seemed to lack a conscience, or their conscience, such as it was, seemed tattered and ineffective. That is why I say that some people seem like natural criminals, because they don't really care about the consequences to other people of their actions. They only care about their own welfare. They do not perceive the connectedness between people, the network that joins us all together. Even in the lyrics of some popular songs, especially rap songs, I perceive this viewpoint. I think people who listen to such music are reinforcing a tendency that they were born with. They are trying to reduce the influence of their conscience, because they feel morality is a weakness, rather than a strength, and that to be evil is to be strong. I see the same philosophy, if it can be called a philosophy, and I suppose it can, in Putin, the strongman in Russia. He, too, believes that might is right, and that to be evil is to be strong. I don't think that such a viewpoint merits a response. The rebuttals are self-evident. China is no better. Both China and Russia are case examples of kleptocracies, or government by thieves.

Review of Ekiga / DreamTime

I'm currently looking for a VOIP provider so that I can make inexpensive long distance phone calls from my computer. Ekiga is one of several VOIP clients available in Linux. I installed Ekiga, but did not get past the configuration Wizard. At step 5 of 9, I investigated setting up a Call Out service, which is my ultimate goal. Computer-to-computer calls are not very useful to me, because the convenience of telephones just can't be beat.

Ekiga's call-out service uses an outfit called DreamTime, which gives Ekiga's developers a decent ten percent of the take. I was willing at first to take a positive view of Ekiga and of DreamTime. However, to sign up, one has to agree to their Terms and Conditions, which seemed onerous:

"You shall not create, publish, distribute, or permit any written material that makes reference to DreamTime without first submitting such material to DreamTime and receiving its prior written consent..." "DreamTime, at its sole discretion, determines whether you are in violation of the User Agreement..." "Any violation of the User Agreement may result in locking of your user account..." "Any request for a refund will result in a minimum $50 research fee."

All of the above terms and conditions seem mean-spirited, written by a misanthrope. DreamTime is threatening to lock the accounts of any customer that dares complain about their quality of service, which they admit may be unpredictable at times. I think that their terms are of questionable legality. It would be interesting to see whether DreamTime could get away with confiscating the account of a customer that posted a negative review of their service. I think that DreamTime would lose that lawsuit, at least in the United States, based upon my limited understanding of business law. I also think that one of their customers could find recourse with the credit card companies or with Paypal, depending upon their method of payment. I am pleased to have read the Terms and Conditions, because now that I have, I know to uninstall Ekiga and not waste any more time with it. It is not a solution, but a potential problem that I don't need.

Kubuntu 13.10 is for Keeps!

Based upon my overall favorable experience, with just a few minor reservations, with Kubuntu 13.04, I opted for a full install of the latest golden egg from the golden goose, Kubuntu, in the process overwriting my PCLinuxOS install. As described in previous posts, I had been dismayed by the lack of certain programs in the PCLinuxOS repository. Kubuntu offers a much wider universe of programs due to its compatibility with Debian. I wanted to return to the light, and luckily for me, the latest Kubuntu 13.10 has just rolled out the door. Using Ktorrent, I torrented the 64-bit version of Kubuntu 13.10, thus ensuring a clean copy, burned the .iso with K3b, and booted the disk. The installation almost went smoothly.

Patience is a Virtue

Upon reboot, the screen froze at the brightening-and-darkening Kubuntu logo. I suspected user error immediately. After all, Kubuntu is a class act. There's no way they would release an install that would not boot, at least on my mainstream hardware--an AMD E-350 apu with ATI Radeon 6310 graphics, 4 gigs of Ram, and a 1.5tb Western Digital Green Drive. I remember popping the dvd out at or near the end of the install when I thought that it was done accessing the dvd. But was the install really finished? Maybe not! I decided to perform the installation one more time to be sure. Kubuntu is always worth a second chance and the benefit of the doubt. This time, I let Kubuntu eject the dvd on its own, without my help, and only when it had done so did I take the disk out. Another change I decided to make was to wait patiently until I saw text on the screen that said "shutting down all processes," or something to that effect. Then I rebooted, and Kubuntu was fine. I've been working with computers long enough to know that user error is the first thing to examine whenever there is trouble. Of course, dear Mr. Kubuntu Developer, to make the install easier, perhaps there should be an instruction on the screen asking the user to keep the disk in the drive until it is no longer needed.

Customizing KDE the Igor Way

After install, the first thing I like to do to any Linux distro is uninstall those prepackaged apps I don't use and install those apps that I do use that the developers did not include. By uninstalling unneeded apps, the frequency and length of future updates can be minimized. In any KDE distro, there is going to be a bias for KDE-specific apps, such as Rekonq for web browsing and Kmail for email. I like many of the KDE choices, such as K3b for cd/dvd burning, Dolphin for file manager, Ktorrent for torrents, and Okular for PDFs, but not all. I can't survive without my Firefox and its universe of add-ons, and I prefer VLC to handle video files, Thunderbird for email, Jedit for coding, and Filezilla for FTP. I decided to keep Kubuntu's default web browser, Rekonq, because even though I prefer Firefox for daily use, Rekonq has its niche. I have found it to be a very lean and agile browser that can handle big, hairy web sites like blogspot, where I compose my posts. Blogspot's "Compose" window can actually crash Firefox on low-spec machines. In cases like that, Rekonq can be a savior. It is a good idea to have a primary and a secondary application for an important purpose like web browsing. Thankfully, Kubuntu has LibreOffice, my choice for office software, already installed.

Kubuntu's solution for package management is Muon Package Manager. Here's a snapshot of Muon (the name, by the way, refers to a subatomic particle):


Muon has really matured since Kubuntu 13.04 and is looking and feeling better than ever.

Muon Package Manager can also update the system and serves as an alternative to the Muon Update Manager, which may not be quite ready yet for prime time, from what I have observed. To use the upgrade option in Muon Package Manager, simply click its "Check for Updates" icon. I expect the Muon Update Manager will be fixed later, but until it is fixed, users should make a note to run Muon Package Manager on a weekly basis to check for and install available updates. Let us give Kubuntu some slack here, because apparently, Canonical sets the release date for all the Ubuntu distros, ready or not, and the problem is after all relatively minor, as there is a workaround. Also, 13.10 is not a long-term support release, but intended for enthusiasts like myself, and it is expected that our enthusiasm will paper over little rough edges in the development snapshot that 13.10 represents. I hope to see Muon Update Manager working soon, but I think I can hang on until it is.

Muon Discover offers more elaborate, user-friendly categorization and presentation of the programs available in the repository. I have not yet determined all of the differences between it and Muon Package Manager. Perhaps Muon Discover intends to offer new features not found in Muon Package Manager. Out of curiosity, I used Muon Discover to install GUFW, a GUI tool for configuring the system firewall. Muon Discover installed GUFW, although I had to search for the little installation progress bar at the lower-left of the screen. After Muon informed me the installation was complete, I noticed that the "Install" button was still enabled beside GUFW, which was confusing. Certainly a user would not wish to install an application twice. Also, when I tried to exit Muon Discover, I received a notice that the application was not responding. I opted to wait for Discover to close on its own, because I did not want to imperil GUFW's installation. After a moment, it closed by itself.

With GUFW, one can configure the firewall with a few clicks and then forget about it. GUFW does not need to autostart every time, but is a run-once utility, although one occasionally may refer to it to open up ports to play online games or torrent. One of the peculiarities of Kubuntu is that it does not include any graphical firewall configuration utility by default. Linux Mint does, and if memory serves me correctly, so does PCLinuxOS. I think that GUFW's absence from Kubuntu may have something to do with GUFW not being a KDE-specific solution and thus posing a bit of an embarrassment, but I'm not sure. For my part, I think it is a no-brainer to include a graphical firewall configuration tool in any modern operating system, and in my opinion, PCLinuxOS and Linux Mint are both correct to do so. I like KDE, but I don't think one has to be a purist about it.

After my visit with Muon, next I like to click on System Settings and begin customizing right away, because I know my preferences. A new user might prefer to get used to the system for a couple of days before they begin customizing. The first thing I do is remove unnecessary services that get loaded at startup. The "Startup and Shutdown" options are found in "System Settings" under the header "System Administration." After loading the "Startup and Shutdown" menu, click on the "Services Manager." Do you use Bluetooth? If not, then you can certainly do without that service loading every time. The same logic applies for such things as the Wacom Tablet and KDE Touchpad Enabler Daemon. If unnecessary services are disabled, slightly more memory is available to programs and, in theory, there is less that can go wrong with the system. I would not classify this as essential for a user like me with four gigs of RAM to play with, but it helps a little bit and satisfies my geeky nature. Here is a snapshot of the "Services Manager" options:


As you can see, I have unchecked some options above.

The "Autostart" sub-menu is rather more useful for the average user and another wonderful aspect of KDE, because I can easily add programs to execute immediately upon boot, thus saving me time. In the morning, I like to hit the power button, then leave for the kitchen and get myself a cup of tea. When I come back, my system is loaded with Thunderbird having checked for new mail, Firefox ready to roll, and Dolphin ready to open any documents I might want to read. Setting these programs to autostart is a true no-brainer. The defaults work fine and no typing is needed. One of the things I like about KDE is that I can get the computer to do what I want it to do without that much effort. Those who remember Windows XP may recall the awful anti-intuitive procedure needed to add a program to startup. I always had to search the internet to jog my memory on how to do it. Not so with KDE, which honors the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid.


Adding Programs to Startup is Easy

I disapprove of using AM and PM for time, when military time seems more logical from every point of view. It is surprising the number of people who confuse 12AM with 12PM and vice versa, but this human tendency toward error can be avoided and our daily discourse simplified if we all convert to using military time. Right click on the clock, choose "Digital Clock Settings," and under the "Appearance" option, click on the wrench beside "Date Format," which will open up another menu, the "Locale" menu that can also be found under "System Settings." In KDE, sometimes there is more than one route to an options menu, but that is for the sake of user convenience. In the "Locale" menu, of course we want to modify Date & Time, even though military time has nothing to do with either locale or date.


Use the above settings to convert to military time

I also like for the desktop clock to display the day of the week, followed by the alphabetic month, the day, and the year. That is a setting found, intuitively enough, in "Digital Clock Settings," accessible by a right-click on the clock. Under "Appearance," choose the "Long Date" under "Date Format." This will produce a rather unsatisfactory appearance, because the font of the long date is, by default, rather small. The secret to increasing the font size, and it is indeed not intuitive at all, is to look in "System Settings" under "Application Appearance" (not Fonts). Only after you have clicked on "Application Appearance" should you choose the "Fonts" option found there. The font that controls the size of the date is not called anything obvious like "Date" or "Time" but instead is named "Small." Alright, you have found the worst problem in KDE! That's not really so bad, now, is it? Really, it's not. A very minor detail, and now that you know, it is no longer a problem. Hopefully, a KDE developer will read this review one day and tweak the Settings menu just a wee bit!


To change the size of the date in your desktop clock, increase the size of the "Small" font

Desktop Effects deserve attention. I am not sure of the reasons why Open GL 2.0 is set as the default instead of Open GL 3.1, but I suspect the reason has to do with keeping things as compatible as possible. I have reasonably modern video hardware that I think can cope with Open GL 3.1, so I enable it. I also feel it is wise to suspend desktop effects for a fullscreen window, because if I am fullscreen in any application, then obviously I am not going to be appreciating any desktop effects.


Why not use Open GL 3.1?

You may have noticed from the above screenshot that my background colors are dark. I suffer from eyestrain if I stare at a bright screen all day long. I have had mixed experiences with dark backgrounds in both Windows and Linux. They tend to work great for some applications, but not so great for others. In my last review of Kubuntu, I praised "Krita - dark," but I later discovered I could not read text on the screen in some applications. If a dark background is to be used, then the foreground text certainly must be brightened, not left dark. To change the background color, choose "Application Appearance" under "System Settings" and look under "Colors." My preference for this release is "Wonton Soup," which seems to be the most sensible setting I've tried so far, although I notice many text foregrounds are still distressingly dark. I have not yet found the killer dark background that slays all competitors, but when I do there will be a coronation in the form of a blog post dedicated to that style.


Wonton Soup provides a nice dark background

Why Do I Love KDE?

I honestly don't know why Ubuntu went their own way with Unity and why Linux Mint defaults to Gnome-derivatives Cinnamon or Mate, but I suppose the wise developers had their own reasons, and that these must be popular options for the desktop. For my part, I see no reason to bother with any other alternative to KDE except to conserve system resources for a low-spec machine, in which case XFCE to me seems like a good choice. KDE is beautiful, sophisticated, powerful and I love that I can customize every aspect about it. At first, the power to customize is double-edged. With great power comes great responsibility. The panel, in particular, remains vulnerable to getting messed up if a user is not careful. I messed up my panel in PCLinuxOS, but was able to restore to default by copying /etc/skel/.kde to my home directory. There is probably a similar failsafe in Kubuntu. At any rate, I will share the present state of my desktop after an afternoon's tinkering:


My desktop uses the tasteful default KDE wallpaper, because it is easy on the eyes

Note the application icons on the left-hand side of my panel. They are, from left to right, "Show Desktop," which simply minimizes the active window, "Dolphin," the default KDE file manager, "Thunderbird," the Mozilla email reader, "Firefox," the Mozilla web browser, "Filezilla," which I use to ftp files to and from the web sites I maintain, and "Jedit," a programmer's text editor, which I love because it has very good support of macros, a terminal icon which simply opens a terminal for command-line input, and of course, where would we be without System Settings, which is used for tweaking everything in KDE.

My clock, as you can see, displays military time, and beneath it we have the day of the week, followed by the month, and then the day, and the four-digit year. The desktop I keep empty, because I've decided I don't want my desktop cluttered anymore. I prefer to launch apps from the panel nowadays, because the panel remains visible more often than the desktop.

Networking in Kubuntu

After customizing the desktop and the installed applications, next on the agenda is introducing Kubuntu to my already existing home network, so that I can print using the network printer and share files between computers.

I do not use wireless and am not that keen on the idea for desktop users, but those users who do may share their experiences in the comments section below.

After a single file copy from my handy-dandy 2GB flash drive, Kubuntu now communicates with my wired, networked Windows and Linux boxes without any problems. New users, please understand one thing about networking in Linux. There is really only one secret that you have to know. Whenever a Linux distro is installed for the first time, there is a file called /etc/samba/smb.conf that needs to be either edited or replaced. The default is not set up to communicate with your network. It can't, because it has no way of knowing what your workgroup is called, although I think it might be a nice touch for a distro to ask, during or after installation, and maybe offer to setup some directories with network sharing. If you already have a network in place and just want to enable networking on your Linux machine and don't care too much about security, you can edit /etc/samba/smb.conf in the following way:

1. Change the workgroup to reflect your actual workgroup name.
2. If your workgroup already exists, then set wins support = no.
3. Set name resolve order = hosts wins bcast lmhosts
4. To make a directory on your Linux home directory visible and modifiable on the network, all you need is something like:
   
   [Downloads]
   path = /home/igor/Downloads
   force user = igor
   force group = igor
   read only = no
   guest ok = yes
   available = yes
   browsable = yes
   public = yes
   writable = yes
   
   

I hardly ever edit smb.conf anymore. I have used the same smb.conf on Linux Mint, PCLinuxOS and now in Kubuntu and it works without fail and gets my machine up and running on the network. This is a file that you will definitely want to backup and keep for any future installation. As a matter of fact, it is the only system-related file I ever backup. The rest, for me, are disposable.

Printing in Kubuntu

A lot of reviewers don't cover the printing angle, because I guess they never sell anything on Ebay or Amazon, but I do. The only way I can explain positive reviews of Open Suse is that the reviewers didn't use their printers. Kubuntu played nice with my network printer, as always. That is a huge reason for me to use Kubuntu. There is something to be said for ease of installation and configuration, particularly when there is no downside to those shining virtues. To configure the printer, I simply clicked on the Printer icon in "System Settings" and clicked on "Add a new Printer." It found the network printer on its own. I did not have to enter the IP address. Kubuntu detected the correct printer driver, too. How's that for service?

I did not experience any problems in Kubuntu until I went to purchase postage on Amazon for something I sold. There the packing list printed without a hitch, but the postage refused to print to my network printer, because the web site's Java application was unable to detect my printer and refused to let me select the printer myself, which I think is the product of very poor programming practice. This is not the fault of Kubuntu but rather seems to me due to a design failure on stamps.com, which I suspect is not performing any testing on Linux machines. I have printed out postage on Ebay many a time, so I do not know what the problem is with Amazon, but maybe they can ask Ebay for help in sorting out all of their program errors. I printed the postage out on my Windows machine instead. I sold a used book for $8, Amazon took a hefty $3 cut, the media mail postage cost $3, and I spent an hour trying unsuccessfully to get the label to print in Linux. After an hour's work tinkering with the printer settings, I was left with a net of $2 and a firm resolution not to sell anything on Amazon ever again, because they don't support Linux and are greedy with the fees. But Kubuntu comes out of this all right in my opinion.

Kubuntu's Long-Term Prospects

Perhaps differences in philosophy are at the root of the MIR/Wayland controversy. I like technology, but believe philosophy is more important. In reality, however much one might like to cast the issue in philosophical terms, the problem has a very practical impact. We observe the classical Linux case of reinventing the wheel. Instead of one display server to suit all distros, now a new wheel must be invented twice, by different teams of developers working presumably in isolation from one another. That is unnecessary diversion of development resources. In addition, it is by no means certain that an application developed for the Wayland environment will also work well in the MIR environment. Thus, there could very well be in the future two classes of Linux applications, those that work in Wayland and those that work in Mir. Of course, I have only touched on two outstanding and obvious points on the controversy. There are others.

Anyone reading my blog can detect dismay over the choice by Canonical to go alone with Mir rather than Wayland in the future. I don't really care about Ubuntu and their Unity, but there is a pertinent question as to how this might impact Kubuntu or for that matter Linux Mint, both of which are based on Ubuntu. I am pleased that Kubuntu's developers have declared on their web site that they will use Wayland in accordance with the same decision by KDE developers and all of the other Linux distros and desktops in the Linux community. I think if Kubuntu ever starts experiencing a lot of friction due to future changes made in the Ubuntu MIR-centric codebase, then they will simply fork from the last stable (stable from the Kubuntu/KDE point of view) and continue as they always have been, perhaps even stronger than before. I think, as they are now employed by Blue Systems, that their long-term prospects are excellent.

Where is Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup on PCLinuxOS?

I was dismayed to discover that there is no Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup available in PCLinuxOS's repo. Not even a version from five years ago. Not even Linley's Crawl, which was released a decade ago. This puzzles me, because the open-source game is available in Debian/Ubuntu, ArchLinux (which has the very latest release, thanks to Jakob Gruber), and now Fedora. I'm afraid that this is going to be a deal-breaker for me, because access to the latest version of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is absolutely essential and non-negotiable. With perfect timing, Kubuntu just released version 13.10.

I tried my hand at being a fledgling PCLinuxOS packager myself and managed to compile Wesnoth 1.10.7 successfully, of which the geeky side of my nature is proud, but this will probably benefit no one but myself. I like the idea of helping the community, but I'm no longer sure what the process is for getting packages accepted into the repo. My hunch is that you have to know somebody. I don't really want to get into the business of having to compile the programs I want anyway. It seems tedious to me. I like having access to a well-stocked, updated repo that is accessible from a well-designed and intuitive update manager. In PCLinuxOS, the update process has proved an annoyance, because a lot of mouse clicks are required, and I am not informed of the descriptions of the packages being updated. In the Ubuntu world, the user can at least read a little blurb about each of the packages being updated.

Although PCLinuxOS provides a stable and fast KDE environment, in part I think due to the strategic decision to remain with an older Linux kernel (causing problems for users with newer hardware), my chief concerns are about the update process and the lack of software available. Just from a few weeks of use, I have noticed a glaring omission (no version of Dungeon Crawl whatsoever, outdated version of Wesnoth) and I wonder what other software I will have to learn to live without or resort to compiling myself if I continue down this road. Based on my experience here, in the future I think it may be wise to remain on the well-trodden paths of either Arch Linux or Debian.

My Code is Beautiful

I'm the type of programmer that likes to beautify, structure and document my code for no reason other than I like to look over the source code and refine every last detail whether it really matters or not. I think that is taking pride in my work. One advantage is that in looking it over so much, I become very familiar with its ways, so that if I ever have a problem, I can resolve it quickly. And we all know the advantage of structure and documentation, which make one less likely to forget things and faster at apprehending complicated processes. I was looking over my regen.sh for Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup today, which I updated, and I thought to myself what a work of art that little thing has become. It's a lot better than it has to be. The idea behind the script file is simple and could have been accomplished with 95% less code, but I added bells and whistles to simplify use and maintenance so that it could endure the centuries, so to speak, although that does seem a bit unlikely. I was always that way with code, whether I was coding pages for web sites using html and css in a text editor or backend programs to handle the accounting for a billion-dollar corporation. I remember spending days refining the central program that handled all the accounting processes from A to Z in the company I worked for. It began its life as spaghetti code, and all the programmers hated it, but in particular I was contemptuous of it. Code like that actually offends me and fills me with the compulsion to clean, clean, clean. When I had finished with it, it was highly organized and easier to understand. Instead of looking at it in the middle of the night, say, when the you-know-what had hit the fan due to technical glitches caused by some other process, and wondering what the hell was happening, I or anyone for that matter could just glance at it and understand exactly how things were supposed to work. It had progressed from being crap-code to being a work of art. I believe that programmers should focus on getting things done first, because after all that is the most important thing, but it is also very important to focus on ease of maintenance to ensure that the code will be useful for years to come. There are some systems and programs that even the end user can tell are based upon very refined code, because of the way they work and the absence of bugs, and even when bugs do arise they magically seem less in severity.

I Recommend Linux Mint to All Computer Users

My brother and I were praising the virtues of Linux yesterday and discussing why Microsoft remains so popular. My non-techie friends will go out of their way and pay a bundle of money just to get the latest version of Windows on their computer, which invariably they dislike. When I mention Linux, they just associate it with geeks and with technical difficulties and lack of software. I mention that one can run Firefox or Chrome on Linux, but they worry about the absence of Internet Explorer. I mention LibreOffice, and they worry over the absence of Microsoft Office. Microsoft has done a number on the general public.

I told my brother that I would feel 100% comfortable installing Linux Mint for my mother. That says a lot. My mother is the opposite of me where computers are concerned. If I feel comfortable having her run Linux Mint, it means I am satisfied Linux Mint is safe, secure and very, very easy to use. Actually I find Linux Mint easier than Windows, and why? Because Linux Mint sets all the drivers up, sets up Firefox with Flash, and does not require any anti-virus. Most of the software comes pre-installed. New software, instead of having to be downloaded and installed from, perhaps, dubious sources, is pulled in from trusted, verified, tested, scrutinized repositories, thus minimizing any chance of malware, the bane of Windows systems. I do not believe Windows is safe for use by the general public, which is using something that will, in the end, cause them heartache and misery, as their systems become compromised, hacked, slowed down, and outright broken. I see this time and time again.

For my brother, the stepping stone into the wonderful world of Linux was Clonezilla, a Live CD that is extremely useful for Windows and Linux users alike. With it, one can create a perfect clone of an operating system. Once he discovered how nice Clonezilla was and how powerful, Microsoft's spell was broken. I seized my opportunity and mailed him a DVD with Linux Mint Xfce. I know Xfce will run fast on any old system he has lying around, and Xfce is perhaps the most problem-free and problem-resistant desktop available for Linux Mint. I love Xfce because it is a wonderful compromise between barebones efficiency and user-friendliness. I also love how fast Xfce boots. When he compares Linux Mint Xfce's boot-time with Windows, I think every Linux user knows which horse wins that race.

I do not grasp the utility of the newer desktops, Mate and Cinnamon. These are defaults with Linux Mint. I believe a lot of time has been invested in developing these desktops and ironing out all of the bugs. They work all right for most purposes, but I fail to appreciate where Mate is in any way superior to Xfce. Where Cinnamon is concerned, I do not see a compelling reason to prefer it over KDE. Xfce and KDE have been around forever, and I don't see any good reason to abandon them now for a new desktop. One of the problems in Linux is that so much effort seems to be scattered shotgun-style, when it might be better to focus the energies of developers on perhaps one or at the most two desktops and a smaller number of apps. I think the central problem revolves around the human ego and the difficulty developers have in working together, sharing the credit, and sharing the decision-making, and arriving with wise and fair decisions that can be accepted by everyone in the group. Diversity of opinion causes developers to break off from a project and form their own project rather than subordinating their preferences to the team. Of course, the personality of a technical person is likely to be divergent and independent to start with, because who but a pioneer would open up his box to find out how it works and how to make it better?

I mentioned that I use PCLinuxOS for one of my desktops, but that is not a distro I would recommend to a beginner. The update process is not as smooth as Linux Mint, and I view the "MiniMe" edition as a potential pitfall for the unwary. If I were to recommend PCLinuxOS to anyone, in the same breath, I would have to warn them not to use the MiniMe version. I would also have to explain the update procedure in some detail. Linux Mint is pretty good about eliminating potential "gotchas" that can cause problems for beginners. In fact, I think that the developers invest a lot of time thinking about how they can make Linux Mint easier to use. However, what I like about PCLinuxOS is that I can compile from source in order to access new versions of software that Linux Mint doesn't have ready yet. I also like that PCLinuxOS apparently runs forever without requiring reinstallation. We will have to see about that over the long term. I also feel better about PCLinuxOS for not following Canonical's descent into Mir.

Gimp Seems Limp

I have not been impressed with the Gimp. My image modification needs are modest. Usually, all I need to do is resize or crop an image. Gimp insists upon saving images in .xcf format, which I have never heard of, and this .xcf format cannot be read by many other programs. That bizarre decision on the part of the developers prohibits use. I suspect that there is a way to teach Gimp how to use the universally accepted .jpeg format or there is a hidden option in Gimp that is not easily found, but one can find by googling "gimp jpeg." Whatever the case may be, I have zero motive to even bother learning Gimp's ways. If I ever have a heavy-duty image editing need, then I turn to Windows 7 and ACDSee, which is intuitive, fast and powerful enough for almost any need of the average user. In Linux, I have found that ImageMagick, a quirky, modest little program, works great for resizing .jpeg pictures and is very fast, too. I also strongly recommend Digikam, which is powerful and capable of handling digital cameras.

PCLinuxOS

I have been pleased with PCLinuxOS so far, although there was a bit of a learning curve for me, arriving from the universe of Linux Mint/Ubuntu. I think what I like most about PCLinuxOS is that I found what appears to me an easier and better-documented path to compiling programs from source, which means I will be able, after educating myself, to access the very latest versions of my favorite Linux programs, such as Wesnoth, something that I was not able to do in Linux Mint without a lot of trial and error. In PCLinuxOS, much of the overhead in setting up the system for building from source has been automated, meaning I can get started rapidly, whereas with any Ubuntu derivative, there is a lot of guesswork involved in determining what dependencies and compilers are needed, and I am not aware of any process that automates all of the overhead. I did manage to compile Ktorrent 2.3.1 before it was made available in Kubuntu 13.04, but I spent a couple hours tracking down its dependencies, and I had to make educated guesses in most cases, because the dependencies named on the Ktorrent web site do not match the names of the dependencies found in the Ubuntu repositories.

Coarse Comments

Sometimes I wonder whether to turn comments off, as some bloggers have already done. Google feeds visitors to just a handful of pages on this blog, for the most part, and those posts tend to concern narrow, technical topics of limited interest to me, such as Blexbot scrapers, or my method for cheating in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, or Kubuntu 13.04. I wrote them, true, but they are not subjects that I find to be of great or abiding interest. The popularity of these posts reflects what people tend to search for on Google and also the stringent competition on Google for philosophical topics. Whenever I write on philosophy, I can almost guarantee no one will ever comment on the post. My site finds a little niche in the search engine database only where narrow, obscure and complicated technical topics are concerned, because there are not enough writers in the world on these topics.

The quality of comments is occasionally deplorable. Recently, someone commented that Blexbot programmers "should be hung from a tree," which I deleted, because that is a horrible thing to say, for many reasons. Such sentiments, common though they may be, will not be published on my watch. I do believe in censorship, where threats and insults are concerned, and this was a key matter of disagreement between myself and a former friend of mine. Some words are precursors to (s)words. That swords not be drawn, let such provocations remain unsaid.

Another person commented that "lol cheating is fun," in reply to a hack for a game, which struck me as ungrammatical, evoking the image of the writer sitting by his computer with a long silvery thread of drool hanging from his open mouth and a dozen empty beer cans by his feet. I invest time and thought into my posts, and if a commenter lacks the ability to do the same, then their comment does not need to live.

I've had worse comments, too, like the one from the meth fan who cursed me in several comments, for no apparent reason, until he revealed the irritant by arguing "some people can handle their meth," which may be up for debate, but foul and abusive language curtails all debate and cedes the field to the other side, me. Former meth users, such as musician Rufus Wainwright and comedian Margaret Cho, two prominent celebrities, have come forward and revealed that meth caused them pain and suffering, along with disturbances in their relationships with other people. Although the same can be said for alcohol, this is not quite the case with a substance like marijuana, which is non-toxic and does not harm the human body. Margaret Cho called marijuana "a vegetable, not a drug," an assertion that I think has some merit, because it is certainly not harmful in the same way that other drugs are harmful. One can use too much marijuana, just as one can eat too much asparagus, but the effects are not as serious as using too much alcohol. Alcohol can and does kill its users in a variety of ways, whereas marijuana does not. On the other hand, I do not believe meth is safe for humans, and have said so here, although I allow a possible exception during battlefield tactics, for which meth has a certain historical basis deriving from WW2. For civilians, I find it difficult to imagine any scenario where meth would be useful medicine, although along with other substances, it could possibly enhance the end-of-life experience for those about to die. I dislike advocating blanket rules that cover all situations, because as an engineer, I know that the devil is in the details. There will be cases that are unforeseen, because who among us sees all?

Fear

I occasionally worry about potentialities like heart disease and stroke. I think fear is something that comes and goes as life progresses. I remember when I was going to school, there was much fear, because of schoolyard bullies. In the last two years of high school, there was no fear. In college, I was fearless. The only thing to fear were things that were relatively easy to prevent, such as car accidents or AIDS. I didn't drink and drive, and appreciated the virtues of condoms and abstinence, the two methods to prevent the spread of AIDS. As one gets older, one contracts various medical conditions like obesity or arthritis or lower back pain that, while minor, are a reminder of the greater problems that lie ahead. Looking ahead, there is certainly a lot to be afraid of, such as senility, stroke, heart disease, loss of brain function, incontinence, and the list goes on.

I think what I fear most is an undignified end. The best death is instantaneous, without long, lingering pain and suffering, and planned, rather than abrupt. The problem with untimely death is that things may be left undone that should have been done, like setting a will in order or doing things for people. I remember helping others care for an elderly, very ill lady about a year ago. She expressed great fear. I think she was afraid of losing control, either of body or of mind or both, and of death, which represents loss of control and loss of identity. I think that she had been strong once. It is difficult to maintain a philosophical pose when death is so near, in the room so to speak, hovering over one's shoulder. I think it is only natural to feel fear. And there is nothing wrong with fear either. Fear has a purpose, too. Fear often keeps us alive by restraining our actions.

Reading biographies of people can be a comfort, because there is the observation that others, even the great and the powerful, and geniuses with fantastic powers of intellect, have passed through the same transitions brought on by age. I have often thought that Shakespeare was shortchanged in the longevity department. Add Chopin and Mozart to that list. It seems that in our rapidly progressing technological world, each generation is luckier than the previous one, because advances in medicine continue to expand and improve the human condition. I wonder, though, whether society will be able to maintain this progress in the face of daunting challenges, such as climate change and economic instability. I don't feel like the Republicans in Congress have any answers. They seem to create new problems rather than solving old ones. It seems to me that there are not enough jobs anymore, due to the automation of so many tasks that used to provide employment to millions. Of course the Republicans don't care about that and wouldn't know what to do about it even if they did care. Education will decline, crime will increase, and politics should turn nastier. The idle and impoverished millions around the world will become fodder for revolutionary sentiment at some point or another, if history offers any guidance in the matter. Whether social unrest takes on a right-wing or left-wing banner is hardly important. I hope for continued stability at least during my lifetime and in my region of the world.