The movie had an interesting cast. Will Smith, Helen Mirren, Ed Norton, et alii.  I needed tissues at the end of it.  Collateral Beauty. Not stellar, but good enough for me. Usually,  I am better at predicting the ending, but this one caught me off guard. 

Now I am off to find a heating pad for an earache. And, my crown came off of one of my molars this morning. Okay, okay...I was eating a gummy bear. I used to hate those things. Now, I am back to hating them. Along with Payday candy bars (which made me lose a filling).  As the dentist said "I got my money's worth out of that filling."  The crown...not so long.  Hey..it's gold, or a composite of it. Maybe I should take it to the pawn shop and tell the dentist I swallowed it. Things always happen on the week end.

Helen (above) always seems to be unruffled in photographs. I'd like to have a bit more of that demeanor within myself. I'll have to work on that.

Easter 1966

I am the one in yellow.  A co worker and I were on a subject the other day and the subject came up as to what is the largest religion in the world. I thought I had read that Buddhism was. I looked it up. I don't know where I got my information, but according to the Internet - it is Christianity, then Islam and third is irreligion. The others fall after.

I asked "What is irreligion?"  I really didn't know. She didn't either. I looked it up. Oh, it is having NO religion or not believing in any particular religion.

I was brought up Christian. That is why two of my sisters and two of my brothers are all dressed up on Easter morning.

I sat here for a few minutes wondering - what image do I post after all this time away? I decided to look to see what my last image was that I uploaded. It was from April 3rd coming back from a funeral (too many of those lately) where a rock flew up off the Interstate and hit my windshield. Sigh. I notice that the top crack is much longer than this photo depicts. If you can see the little dot it is heading for - that is a chip from a previous hit. I do not know what will happen when they meet up.

It took me a while this morning to remember how to get into my blog. I perused my files searching for login instructions. After a few false leads, it just popped into my head. I had already logged into my gmail account I use - perubee. And once I typed in the blogger address (with the correct welcome to my world) I was in.

I won't give you any lame excuses or reasons as to why I was away for a year or two. And, I am not positive I will post on a regular basis. This is more therapeutic for me than any other reason.


I need to update my header as we have no cats, now. And, I don't plan to get any more. Two male cats that I had were stupendous pets. The other male and the two females were royal pains. We have 3 dogs, the Boxer and the two pups.

I will leave you with a site that I love to use.

www.protopage.com

No matter if I am at work, at home, at a sister's house, working in Columbus or in Indonesia, I can pull up my protopage and all my bookmarks are there neatly categorized into:

tech
linux
education
shopping
art
news

etc....

So far, I only use the Bookmarks widget and the digital clock. I see where I should use the Photo widget, Google calendar, To-do list...

It is free - a wee bit of advertising at the top of the page - you have the option to close that.

I imagine the posts will come regularly as I feel I have a lot to put down on paper or screen.

A Little Monkey and Tails.

I had this cute munchkin visit me yesterday for a bit. Her father (my nephew) was passing through.  He and his wife have a set up where he takes this little one to visit his friends from around where he grew up (they have children also) for the week-end, and her older son (from another relationship) goes to his father's grandparent's for the week-end - resulting in the Mom getting 2 days all to herself. They call it a mental health day (or something similar). I think that is wonderful! Although I am not positive when my nephew gets any totally alone time.

She is the cutest little 3 year old and she climbed the neighbor's swing set/fort like a little monkey.

I am going to try harder to post more often. I have so many things I can do on-line that almost all of my time is spent sitting here at the computer. Almost everything I do can help me in my job in one way or the other. Helping people is still one of the biggest areas in my life for me. Online, I am a reader of redd!t and have several divisions that I read to see if I can help. I also get several ideas and tips from readers to benefit myself.

Just last evening I was reading the area about Tor (The Onion Router). This one has been an example I use when I am instructing the techs about the filter. Most of them have no idea what it is, or how it works. Sigh. But that is an entire book in itself and if you know me, you are probably aware that I can get very long winded when I start talking tech.

Anyway, the user mentioned Tails.  I had not heard or read about this one. So, I had to investigate and of course I had to have it. For testing purposes and to present to the techs how end  users (the savvy ones) are getting around the filter in the schools and endangering their network.

I had to find 2 USB sticks with 4 GB available. (I had always referred to them as flash drives, but I kind of like this term). So I did have one empty 4 GB one (how did THAT happen?), and the other had just back up data on it - so I moved that to one of my external HDDs.

So, I started this new endeavor.  Four hours later I went to bed. LOL!  I am learning a lot, but I am also being very, very cautious. I have screwed up my system before trying this stuff and I should have known not to start this after 9 p.m. I was much too tired to think this through and follow long, intricate instructions.

It is one of those deals where you are going through the steps one at at time, and you come across the step that reads "If you don't have such and such, click here to set that up (or install it). So, you follow that link and you start installing that program. You get halfway through the steps and you come across another one that reads "If you have never installed such and such before, you need to change this or that before you can enable it". And I follow the link to THAT site. It went about 4 sites deep and I was getting very tired.

Well, it didn't work my first go round. But hey, I did learn a lot. And, I will try again today. Maybe. Of course I will - I am too excited to get this puppy on a flash drive and see what I can do with it in my work environment so I can bring it to their attention to watch out for this work around.

I run into the techs who have the attitude "So, what? They are always going to find a way around the filter. I can't stop them all."  This might be true, but I can see that he/she has given up the fight. This saddens me. Yes, there will always be a rogue student who knows so much about technology that he will consider this a challenge (sometimes they don't mean harm, they just want the ego boost that they were able to beat the system) and brag to his friends and share his knowledge.

But once in a while, guys......once in a blue moon - I get a tech who gets that look in his eye, the "Oh really?" look and they write this down. They hopefully are going to take action to block or attempt to block this activity in his or her district.

And that is why I do it. That is why I share what I know with others. I want to make the schools safer for the students. It may be a losing battle, but I can't just say "Screw it. Let 'em see it. They're gonna see it anyway."  Well, I'd prefer them NOT to see it in an educational environment. In other words "Not on MY watch."

Did anybody watch the movie "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?"  You know how I love my movies and I have so many I can talk about. I like Tina Fey in MOST of her movies. I am not a HUGE fan, but at least she does not make me cringe. For this movie, they delicately add humor to a horrifying situation that so many live through. But then there was MASH. I know the humor was exaggerated, and there were only a few times when the show brought us back to the reality of the horror of war.

It is slowly coming back to me. I had trouble remembering my password today. I had trouble finding spell check. But it is coming back. I need to go and ready all of YOUR posts this past year (or has it been longer) to see what is going on with you.

I have a lot more to write (tell). This year seemed to be a bad one for cancer hitting my friends. They are fighting the fight. A lot of little children in my family. I always like that. I was the youngest of 8, and I was 12 years old before any of my siblings had a baby. They then came thick and fast, but that first grandchild (for my Mom) and first nephew (for me) was doted on. My sister was the type who packed up her husband and baby and drove 50 miles one way EVERY week-end to stay with us (at my Mom's house). And on Sunday evenings drive 50 miles back.  Well, her husband drove. Her husband did everything for her. Nice in some ways, but over the years (as she has told us) it can be very smothering. We used to chide my sister when the gas stations changed over to self-serve. She had ALL the gas stations marked out who would pump the gas for you. It was ages before she was able to pump her own gas. I'm not sure she can, even now. Hmmmmm..... LOL!

Ah, I'm almost afraid to show my face around here. In the past year, I have posted once. In September 2015. Before that it was May 2015? I think. I am rusty circumventing my way around this blogging application and things do look different. Somewhat. Do I have a photo? Let's see....

Thanksgiving 2015. I am the blond at top left. This is not even close to my immediate family. This is about half of our "immediate" family. It was nice enough to sit outside for the pic.

I will try to ease myself back into this environment and maybe give some "excuses" as to why I have been MIA.

Ah....where have I been?  I guess I needed a break. I am currently updating a Newsletter for work and I needed to test a blog site. So naturally, I chose this one. I need to show the techs in the districts how easy it is for a student to see inappropriate pictures when a blog site (such as blogger.com) is open.

Okay...I've seen enough.  I changed my interests to some unpleasant subjects, then went to other bloggers with the same (unpleasant) interests. About lost my lunch.

So, as an example let us say that blogger.com is allowed (open) in a school district. The reason is a lot of educators (teachers and such) create a blog on the site they are familiar with (such as our - blogger.com). They ask the tech to allow the site - let's call it Mr. Williams Science Class. On blogger.com it may be called: mrwilliams.blogger.com.  The filter recognizes the root in the URL. In this case, "blogger.com" It won't only allow mrwilliams.blogger.com, it must allow the entire site. I have tested this like crazy hoping I can just get Mr. Williams' blog site. These are examples, by the way.

Nope. Filter must allow the entire blogger.com site. Well, given a savvy student, once they realize that they can get to blogger.com, they can create a blog in about 15 minutes and place interests in their profile with subjects describing any sexual/fetish term you can think of - and begin finding others with the same interests who have posted pictures that you would never have believed existed 15 years ago.

To make it even worse, the tech has no idea how this works. Most of them don't. Not only do they allow blogger.com, but they allow the entire category. In our filter it is called blogger.forums.

That allows all blog sites (that the filter has categorized as such).  Wordpress.com.

There we go. Seven minutes. It took me 7 minutes to create a new blog site in wordpress.com, verify the site with one of my many fake e-mails and search for nude photos on the blog site. I was looking at nasties in no time.

The above wordpress.com is categorized in the forums.blogs category. So many districts have this open. I try to get the word out in my Newsletter. At my trainings, I discover that nobody reads my Newsletters.

What should I use? Shock and awe?  Should I have the host of the training sit there in front of everybody, create their own blog page on wordpress, type in nude under interests and let them all see for themselves?  Would I get in trouble for demonstrating this in a school? Sigh.

I have a training coming up next week. Nobody has signed up yet. They do not have time they say. I had three show at the last one. One tech was brand new, one tech will never get it (as in he will never understand how the filter works) and another was rather savvy, but I shocked him with what I showed them.

So, there you have it. Will Little Johnny see anything? - maybe not. High School Johnny - you betcha.

Looking out the window

My little great niece looking out the window with curious George. Picture provided by her Mom.

Such sweetness. Been over a month since I have seen this little one. Miss her.

We are still here at the Peruby household. Strange how I do not have the "urge" or "need" to post these days. Not certain as to why.

I suppose it comes and goes. Nothing happened that would have supplanted the exercise that I can think of.

I watched "The Imitation Game" and "Kidnapping Mr. Heineken"

I also got into an older series with Helen Mirren - "Prime Suspect". Only watched the first two.  Not certain I will watch any more.  Helen looks as if she has had work done, and if she has it was money well spent. She looks spectacular.

Good-bye, Sable

We put our older dog Sable, down on Wednesday. She was slowly getting worse over the last couple of years - the vet said she had really bad arthritis and could not guarantee an operation would be successful.  She fell down our basement steps and must have ruptured something.

The vet said the x-rays showed a possible tumor on either her heart or her spleen. Something inside ruptured and she had severe internal bleeding.

We had her cremated and the funeral home furnished a beautiful wooden box with her remains. That leaves 3 dogs and four cats. And one cat ain't lookin' so good.