Xfinity and NHL Center Ice: Few HD Channels (2019-2020)

October 4, 2019

How in the world does Xfinity not have all the NHL Center Ice games in HD? It’s baffling to me that a cable provider as big as Xfinity in 2019 doesn’t have every channel in HD. So, fair warning to all those NHL Hockey fans thinking of getting Xfinity and the NHL Center Ice Package: be prepared for disappointment. As of the 2019-2020 season, there are only two dedicated channels for NHL Center Ice on Xfinity that are in HD. But what happens if more than two games are playing?…
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Ramblings

Associated Press (AP): Biased to the Left?

September 28, 2019

Associated Press

News agencies and journalists have always been biased to one side of the political spectrum or the other. It’s nothing new. No matter how far back in time one goes, every single media outlet, magazine and newspaper has exhibited some form of bias. So it should come as no shock to anyone, that the media is still biased today. Some like to think one agency is less biased than another, and while that may be true, one must always keep an open mind and apply critical thinking skills when reading…
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Media Bias, Politics

Recession Imminent Due to Liquidity Problem?

September 19, 2019

Federal Reserve Chairman Powell

UPDATE: Since this original post, the Fed has now pumped more than $1T into the banking Repo markets and there is no end in sight. Fed Chairman Powell today indicated the US was not heading into a recession and said the economy is doing quite well. Consumer spending is up, housing starts are good. But in the same breath indicated the Fed was again cutting its lending rate by a quarter of a percentage point. Seems rather contradictory considering the Fed cuts its rate when it needs to spur the…
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Economy

RAW vs JPEG: Which Format is Better for Photographers?

July 11, 2019

Many beginning photographers are confused on the difference between JPEG and RAW. Is one better than the other, and if so, how and why? It all boils down to who, or what, post-processes the photosensor data. Post-processing is the process of manipulating saturation, sharpness, white-balance, lens-correction, noise reduction, highlights, shadows, and a whole bunch of other variables. You can have the camera do it for you, in which case it’s going to create a JPEG file. Of, if you want to do the post-processing yourself, you’ll want to record the…
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Photography

Deleted My Facebook Account for Good!

December 22, 2018

Delete Facebook

At one time I was addicted to Facebook. Pure and simple. I checked my posts every 5 to 10 minutes looking for that  dopamine high one gets when they see people liking their posts. I craved the interaction, the replies, the sympathy, and people agreeing with me. I loved standing on my proverbial soapbox, posting stuff on my timeline that was tantamount to speaking publicly in front to 300+ “friends”. Something I’d never, ever do in a real life public forum. Oh, how I hate public speaking. I felt like…
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Ramblings

Block Windows 10 From Tracking You

November 18, 2018

There is no reason an operating system needs to phone home telemetry data in order to function properly. The sole purpose for this capability is so the operating system can report back statistics about computer use, operator habits, and other things which can then be analyzed and/or provided to other third parties to help them develop or improve their products. Unix, Linux, Solaris, OpenVMS, and a multitude of others don’t phone home, so there is no reason Windows 10 needs to either. Good news is, you can block the telemetry…
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pfSense

GPL CHAT Jabber/Google Talk Outgoing Traffic

November 17, 2018

I found a bunch of outgoing consecutive GPL CHAT Jabber/Google Talk Outgoing Traffic packets on my LAN interface in my pfSense Suricata log today and found it rather interesting. Although Suricata doesn’t seem to think it’s suspicious based on the class message it returned, I do. The IP from which the traffic originated from was my iPhone. Moreover, I don’t have Jabber or Google talk installed on it. Still yet, the destination IP address was ec2-54-159-108-26.compute-1.amazonaws.com. The only thing I was doing on the phone around that time was using…
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pfSense