Solid Energy and other Tech News

I don't usually suggest investment in companies, but if this one "goes public" soon it could be a big investment win.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/solidenergy-systems-to-release-lithium-metal-battery/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bAY5195YHs

Another web site article on Solid Energy



New Telescope to Unlock the Universe

Microsoft Intrusiveness

At school we could potentially use any computer in the school.. We might use a computer in one classroom and another in another classroom or another in the library. We logged on with one network account and password rather than a local account for each computer. After using 15 accounts and passwords for the computer system, e-mail, Blackboard, MySchool, etc,. it occurred to me that I might want to use a password on my home computer. So, I added a familiar password. Then, after some weeks had gone by, I went to logon and I noticed the account was labeled Administrator. That surprised me because I specifically have an Administrator account aside from the local Standard account I use daily.

So, I investigated it. Why was my local Standard account now labeled Administrator?

I went to System Settings and there the account was shown as an Administrator AND that it now had the network logon account I have been using for school access to Microsoft Outlook (Microsoft's e-mail system). How could that have happened? Am I just forgetting something I have done? That's certainly a possibility these days.

Was this an accident I created or was this something Microsoft was doing to insinuate itself into my computer? Do they want everyone to login to Microsoft to use their home personal computer?

I had to cut off that tentacle immediately. I created another account and changed my personal computer's login to that local Standard account.

At school I used an Outlook account for e-mail and a regular Microsoft account to get access to some free software I could download for my school work. Had these followed me home? Then I noticed something else curious. When you 'manage' one of these "not my local Standard account"s it doesn't give you the option to simply delete the listing of it. It loads a browser and goes to the Outlook (Microsoft's e-mail system) login. Why would I want to login to Microsoft just to delete the listing of that account as a way to logon to my home computer. I'm not a Microsoft employee. If I want to use the Microsoft service I'll go to their webpage and logon there. I don't need to logon to my personal computer via that siter. At that moment the word "personal" seemed to be losing some of its meaning.

I decided to go through Control Panel to User Accounts and see if anything different appeared. It did. The old Windows 7 way showed the account as Standard. Clearly windows 10 was doing something new and different. The old Windows 7 User Accounts also didn't associate an e-mail address or corporate logon account with a home personal computer logon.

So, I now use the new standard user account to login at home, but I still have the Microsoft account listed as a way to logon to my own home computer. Strange.

QUESTION: Is Microsoft trying to further entangle itself with our home computers? What can be done to prevent it?

Healthy Eating

I finally finished my school work July 21st, so now my exercise and eating may return to normal healthier ways.

A couple of days ago I bought a rotisserie chicken and have been hacking away at it. Today was its last day. I also happened to have a can of chicken noodle soup. Inspiration hit and I decided to get the best chicken meat, chop it up and add it to the soup. Add the right amount of water, cook it for 5 minutes and great chicken soup.

This isn't amazing or hugely inspiring, but it is a step toward more cooking and less "out of the box" dinners.

I may also have time and reasons to blog a bit more now.

Hope you're all having a great summer. It's been pretty hot and humid here.

TRUMP REPUBLICAN PLATFORM TO OVERTHROW U.S. CONSTITUTION

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/07/19/3799596/single-radical-line-republican-party-platform/

Energy

This is a short post about a big topic and a couple of web posts/articles which explain it very well. Progress is being made and very quickly.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/12/3776728/climate-change-solutions/


In the thinkprogress post there is a link. I give it here for simplicity. It's got a ton of graphs and charts and you can browse it without reading a lot.

http://about.bnef.com/content/uploads/sites/4/2016/04/BNEF-Summit-Keynote-2016.pdf

If you had any doubt that electing Democrats, or any politicians, who believe in pushing for a more compitititive and "green" energy world could make a change, just look at these. It matters.

Update:  Already, better sunlight to electricity:

http://www.gizmag.com/solar-cell-electricity-efficiency-world-record-unsw/43384/

Elections Bring Hope for Change

I don't agree a lot with Bernie Sanders, but he, and most Democrats, recognize the dangers America faces because our economic system isn't working correctly. We would all like the economy to be growing at a faster rate, but as long as the benefits of that aren't distributed to everyone's benefit it's a worthless exercise -- or worse. Today America's corporations are hoarding money overseas and they're paying an already very low federal tax rate and they're not feeling any pressure to be especially entrepreneurial or patriotic. The effects of this are that the wealth being produced by Americans is being taken off-shore and used to the benefit of other peoples, that the federal government is (to a degree) bought and paid for, so it can't raise the minimum wage rate or the tax rate. One secondary effect is that the slow economy means it's hard for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates or to reduce supports to corporations. Another is that the debt problems means we can't really afford to waste money on military excursions around the world. That leads to other consequences we don't want. We need to pressure the fat and happy lazy rich corporations to pay their taxes, so we can pay down our debts, raise money to build infrastructure and help pay more for education. They should pay their workers more, so those people can put money back into the economy to begin a cycle upward instead of lazy circles in the sky. They should pay the profits they're holding to their stockholders, so it can be taxed. The rich corporations and their lackeys are killing us.

But, elections bring hope for change.

On the Republican side they are committed to not raising taxes, but indeed to lowering them on the rich and corporations. That would only exacerbate the problems.

On the Democratic side there is a radical, a Democratic Socialist, who has no supporters in Congress, and a more centrist pragmatic incrementalist who would happily work with anyone to solve these and other problems.

America has to choose. Let's hope they choose to make progress of some kind. We can't afford to fiddle while Rome burns.

Update: Windows 10 and The Case of the Disappearing CD/DVD Optical Disc Drive

Yesterday I lost my CD-DVD drive. Well, it seemed that way.

A friend loaned me a DVD with some chess material and when I put it in the drive it just whirred a few seconds and then went quiet. When I clicked on "This PC" (an icon on my  Desktop) it showed the top levels of my file system and there was no optical drive in sight. OMG, what happened? Has it died?

I started up Device Manager and it wasn't listed there as an attached device. How could this calamity befall me now?

My next step, after the inevitable hot sweaty panic and the cooling down phase, was to go onto the Internet. Oh wait, that's not working either. What the heck is going on here?

Total freakout phase begins...

I restarted my PC and that didn't help, so I had to reboot the Wireless device, remove its battery, put it back together (not a long process) and then restart again. Thankfully that worked to make the wireless access point reboot and I had internet access again. Whew.

Thought the world was falling apart for a few minutes there.

So, as I was saying, I went onto the Internet and began to look for solutions to my optical drive problem. Time for another Trump-like digression? Did I mention the time? It was already closing in on midnight and I haven't been able to study for school. These problematic interventions aren't helpful. I went to Microsoft and HP (maker of my PC) and neither seemed terribly helpful, though I did learn HP also wants to intrude onto my PC  with their Personal Assistant software and regular updates (of what I know not). Everybody wants to steal my computer and I don't mean the hackers.

Somewhere in my browsing I came across an article saying a few people had gone to their BIOS configuration program (reached at reboot/restart time by pressing a function key which your PC maker specified). This isn't necessary to fix the problem, but for those who are comfortable with this kind of thing it's helpful to realize your BIOS still recognizes the optical drive hardware is still there and in good working order. In fact, the main thing your BIOS software does at startup is to check your RAM, CPU, Keyboard and other things to see if you have a working computer and only after a few things like that does it begin to load the operating system (Win 7, Linux, etc.). Well, my PC's BIOS showed the optical drive was still there. Whew! Now, why wasn't the operating system (oh, wait Windows 10 is new) recognizing it.

A little more browsing and I found a Microsoft discussion forum with the answers.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-files/windows-10-dvd-drive-missing/f246ef3d-ff9a-4cd2-9746-7de01184c258

Apparently there have been some other people who "lost" their CD/DVD drive after Windows 10 was installed. Why hadn't I thought of that? I had lost use of my printer right after Windows 10 was installed and just doing a device driver update solved that problem. The big difference was that my PC hadn't completely lost sight of the printer. Now my PC wasn't even recognizing there was hardware on my PC.

When I first read through the forum discussion I wasn't sure I could trust them. The answer seemed odd and I don't like messing with things which I'm not absolutely certain are broken. But, reading the discussion showed several people had tried the 'solution' and it had worked. Finally, the HP "help guy" also endorsed it as THE solution.

So, I did it and it worked immediately.

By now it was about 1:30am, but I was feeling like a weight had been lifted.

The solution was to go to Device Manager, click on the IDE/ATA Controllers list and uninstall the shorter ones. One by one and suddenly the OS says it's time to Restart your computer NOW. After the Restart the optical drive is back and working fine. Easy.

Is this the answer for all problems? No, but for this specific problem of the disappearing CD/DVD drive it worked like a charm.

Now back to studying.