Mindconnection eNL, 2014-03-16

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Microsoft is forcing the issue, and what many people hear is "Buy a Mac." But the idea of transitioning everything to a Mac is not only one of a huge time investment but also one of significant monetary investment.

I have good news for you!

Because I have to make a living, I haven't downgraded my workstation to the productivity-killing W7. It has stayed on XP. This, however, cannot be a permanent solution. I went online looking for ways to fix W7. I found those and have applied them to my W7 laptop. They work.

It is actually possible to use W7 without seeing productivity plummet. What's the magic secret, here? Microsoft routinely chooses the worst possible settings for its default values, so changing these can vastly improve the user experience. You just have to figure out where they hid the controls that allow you to stop a given problem.

• This helps get rid of all the jumping around that W7 does:
  http://www.worldstart.com/xp-classic-view-in-windows-7/
• The main problem is the taskbar, something that W7 castrated. This solution fixes a couple of problems, the most frustrating being where Windows combines things to leave the user totally clueless as to what's open or not:
  http://www.ehow.com/how_8434134_make-like-windows-xp-taskbar.html. Yes, you actually get new windows indicated on the taskbar when you open a new window! What a concept!
• Another problem is Windows Explorer doesn't display the file tree. This is unforgivable. What sadist at Microsoft thought this up? In XP, you see the file tree graphically in both panes. In W7, you see the path of one pane across the top. You need several more clicks, each of which alter what you're looking at instead of showing you where you are, to see where you are. Yes, this can be fixed! Here's the fix:
  http://merill.net/2009/04/show-folder-tree-in-windows-7-explorer/

And here's an article that's a little more comprehensive just in case you want to do more than fix these three "Why you should not use W7" problems:
http://notebooks.com/2011/05/05/how-to-make-windows-7-look-and-act-like-windows-xp/

Now, it would be nice if MS simply released each version of Windows with two buttons so you can choose their way or your way. The buttons would be labeled "Maddening Mode" and "Normal Mode," respectively. I doubt the folks at Microsoft will ever "get it" as to why just about everyone hates Microsoft and how simple it is to fix that. The good news is we don't have to rely on them to have any brains at all.

And in an entirely different vein...

There is hope. In Kansas, lawmakers have been rejecting much of the costly (and mostly illegal) mislegislation spewed by the psychopaths in the District of Corruption. Consequently, Kansas is doing better than the nation as a whole--more jobs per capita, etc. If you're not in Kansas, how can this be good news for you?

A. It proves that standing up to lunacy and crime is possible. Resistance is not futile.

B. It shows that people are better off when they are plundered less.

The states have far more power than is widely acknowledged. Contact your state politicians and let them know you want a taste of "the Kansas Miracle," by which you mean a less heavy federal boot placed upon your neck. This obviously includes Obummercare, but don't limit your admonitions to that. Many personal freedoms are crushed by this cadre of criminals, too.

Here's good news for the apocalypse crowd (not for the rest of us though, sorry):

Barry Soetoro, when running for POTUS using his alias "Barrack Hussein Obama" rather than his legal name, promised to "eliminate the debt." I think this financially illiterate person meant the "deficit." It should be no surprise to those who've been following the antics of this compulsive liar that he has, mostly through illegal means, increased the official debt by 80% in just six (agonizing) years.

The accumulated debt he "inherited" took 214 years to accumulate. He's on track to double that by the end of his second term.

Note also that the administration of this compulsive liar has grossly under-reported the actual deficits. For example, Obama's folks recorded a $1 trillion deficit for 2012 but the GAO said that "if you apply honest accounting methods" it was $6 trillion. So he's probably already doubled the debt and then some. We can see the results....

Debt of this magnitude has hugely deleterious effects on the economy (a canonical fact based on the truth that economies depend on capital, not debt, for their health). Anyone who's obsessed with doom and gloom should send Barry a "Thank You" card for bringing this devastation upon us. Things are decidedly in the toilet. Only 49% of Americans of working age can find a job, and if you really want to look at Barry's handiwork just look at the stats on homeless schoolchildren.

The bad news here is Woodrow Wilson's 100 year reign as Worst President Ever has probably ended. Poor Woody.

The Ectaco C-Pen scanner is a line scanner you can use to scan directly into any PC application.

This is a pretty amazing device, because you can scan from surfaces that are curved, laminated, or even patterned. This scanning pen works with any PC!

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Watch for patterns, and tune out "bad channels." What you feed your mind is important. This is why, for example, I don't listen to anything Barry Soetoro (aka Barrack Hussein Obama) says. What a great example he is, when you need an example of something wrong!

That said, I want to defend him against a charge that simply is not true. Yes, he is a compulsive liar. But it's not true that he always lies. In fact, he was caught telling the truth for 38 seconds straight. I know that many people consider that impossible, which is why I provided the link.

Also, there's a mitigating circumstance that helps make this story of Barry's amazing feat believable. He was talking about Led Zeppelin rather than his (illegal) actions while (illegally) in office. One positive point about this psychopath is he at least has good taste in music.

It's probably true that all politicians lie, or at least hedge the truth. Their lies normally have some connection to reality. That is not the case with Barry Soetoro, who does not even use his real legal name. He takes an "up" is "down" approach to lying. No connection to reality whatsoever. Keep that thought in mind, for a minute.

We know that just about every President tells a whopper and gets tagged for it. That one lie follows him around like a bad fart. Then we have Obama, who hasn't told just one stinky whopper. He has been a virtual factory of lies, many of which are so blatant as to be highly insulting to our intelligence.

And in contrast to other Presidential lies, which have a plausible connection to reality, hundreds of his lies have no connection to reality at all.

Here's a review of famous Presidential lies:

• LBJ:  We were attacked (in the Gulf of Tonkin).
• Nixon: I am not a crook.
• GHW Bush: Read my lips - No New Taxes.
• Clinton: I did not have sex with that woman... Miss Lewinski.
• GW Bush: Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.

My apologies to former President Carter for not remembering enough of what he said to recall any lies. I don't think he's even known for any lies. So no whopper, there.

When it comes to Obama, which of his many egregious lies is his whopper? Here's partial list of his "over the top" lies that have zero connection to reality:

• I will have the most transparent administration in history.
• I will eliminate the national debt.
• The stimulus will fund shovel-ready jobs.
• I am focused like a laser on creating jobs.
• The IRS is not targeting anyone.
• It was a spontaneous riot about a movie.
• I will put an end to the type of politics that "breeds division, conflict and cynicism".
• You didn't build that!
• I will restore trust in Government.
• The Cambridge cops acted stupidly.
• The public will have 5 days to look at every bill that lands on my desk
• It's not my red line - it is the world's red line.
• Whistle blowers will be protected in my administration.
• We got back every dime we used to rescue the banks and auto companies, with interest.
• I am not spying on American citizens.
• Obama Care will be good for America.
• You can keep your family doctor.
• Premiums will be lowered by $2500.
• If you like it, you can keep your current healthcare plan.
• It's just like shopping at Amazon.
• I knew nothing about "Fast and Furious" gunrunning to Mexican drug cartels.
• I knew nothing about IRS targeting conservative groups.
• I knew nothing about what happened in Benghazi.
• I have never known my uncle from Kenya who is in the country illegally and that was arrested and told to leave the country over 20 years ago.
• And, I have never lived with that uncle. (He finally admitted (12-05-2013) that he DID know his uncle and that he DID live with him. )
• "I, Barrack Hussein Obama, pledge to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America."

Imagine what happens to the brain of someone who listens to a liar like this. The results cannot be good. In fact, here's an example of how this pollution can render a person too stupid to understand the logic of a simple question:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_GI33A4sRU.

To protect your mind, tune out bad channels. Your brain will respond to what you feed it. Garbage in, garbage out. Take care to protect it from pollution sources like Barry Soetoro. Of course, he is only one example of a brain-deadener. There are others. Avoid them.

This one click test will tell you how anonymous or trackable your browser "fingerprint" is and what information you are communicating to Web sites. It's possible your browser "fingerprint" (the information you share) is so rare it's unique (one of a kind), thereby absolutely identifying you. And that's not a good thing.

https://panopticlick.eff.org/

While a well-developed back is impressive, my reason for developing my back is more about function than looks.

What does it take to build your back? Different folks will tell you it's this or that magic exercise. I won't get into that particular fray, except to note that women and men with great back development nearly always train with a chinning bar rather than a lat pulldown machine. Avoid machines.

How you train on that bar is particularly important. I go for the squeeze. I want to feel that hard contraction on each rep, and a burn on each rep as the workout progresses. This is what stimulates the adaptive response and thus those strong, impressive muscles that give you real strength to do real work as a real athlete.

You should do chinups and pullups, and you should do them with the goal of working the muscles rather than obtaining a particular count. The latter practice results in cheating, thereby defeating the purpose of the exercise. You want each rep to be hard, rather than making reps easier just so you can do more of them.

There are all kinds of little tricks for jazzing up your chinning bar work. For example, there's the hand over hand technique in which you walk along the bar hand over hand. My bar isn't wide enough for this (you need about 6 ft, minimum), so I don't do it. This technique, and others like it, work because they get you out of the rut that people typically find themselves in after a few months of chinning bar work. They've mentally adapted to up down, up down. So instead of being fully there in the exercise, they allow their mind and their body to be on autopilot.

Rather than use the trick of the month (which works until you get into a new rut), focus on that contraction rather than on the movement. Yes, make sure you are going all the way down and all the way up--but your mind needs to be "inside" the muscles focusing on that squeeze.

Don't focus on how many reps, focus on making each one count. It really matters how much tension you put your back muscles under. Yes, count the reps. But keep your mind on what the muscle is doing not on how many times the muscle is doing it.

The same principle applies to those bent-over rows that build your rhomboids. Notice my rhomboids in the photo. You don't get those by counting out three sets of eight reps. You get those by doing one rep with a very hard contraction that you feel through the entire muscle of each muscle you're working, then doing a few of those reps in a row to complete a set. For those who like to count, I typically work 4 to 6 reps in a set and work 4 to 6 sets.

I do a double workout for my back. On back and biceps days, I do my regular workout in the morning. Then I come back in the afternoon for a second one. This second one is all about putting the muscles under tension for that hard contraction. I might do only three pull-ups in a set, and do only two sets. And I do everything very slowly. A pull-up in the morning might take 2 seconds up and 3 seconds down, but one in the afternoon is likely go to 20 seconds up and 30 seconds down. Then I follow with hard contractions in static poses. Then I finish up with posing moves just to "pump" the muscles.

• The best workouts are short and intense.
• A good diet contains far more flavors and satisfaction than the typical American diet.

Life doesn't offer a whole lot of "do overs." Make your decisions count, because the consequences will likely be irreversible.