Thursday, May 1, 2014

What Happened? They're Tearing Down Our Youth! Cell Phones! Video Games! Computers & the Internet!

What happened to our youth?  I took a good, hard look at Google Maps to see.

It's not just Richardson Square that's gone...

Of all the malls we went to, Richardson Sqaure was the most convenient,
   (especially for simple after-school pleasures)
Valley View was second in convenience, and pretty nice,
Of course, the Galleria... nuff said...
but I always liked Prestonwood best.

Now it's a Wal-Mart.  A set of strip malls.  And, if you'll believe it, an airport.  I feel pretty sure that wasn't there, before.

I also looked on maps over by Big Spring Elementary - did you know there's a lake just the other side of the "nature trail," now?  I guess it's been there for years, but it's got piers, and everything.  Boats 'n stuff.  And that big field across the street from the school is mostly a swamp, it looks like.  I used to play with friends, there, during recess.  We'd play "G-Force."  Yeah, the old "Americanized" version of the anime "Gatchaman."

Richardson Junior High is still there, but it's got a new name now.  At least it's still a school.  A Math and Science Magnet school, but that's ok.  I wonder what they use the old band hall for, now?  The days of Mr Costellano directing band are long gone, I guess.

It's weird to look back on all these places, even just with Google Maps & with street view.  Places where Home used to be, and is no longer.  Places that were so important to our lives that even decades later, fill our memories more than most of what's happened since.

It's not so much that I'm brought to wonder what happened to our youth, as: What happened to make such important places less valuable than a parking lot?  Is it online shopping?  Cell phones?  What was it?

Most of us didn't have computers in our homes.  When I graduated in '89, there was just the one set of computer labs in the school.  There were the TI based MS-Dos machines, and the IBMs.  I learned some Basic and Turbo Pascal on the non-IBMs.  I didn't even really consider that I'd get my first computer shortly before graduation (a 80286 briefcase portable with monochrome EGA graphics, 512k ram, 1.2m 5 1/4 floppy, & a 30 mg hd).  I never, ever considered that computers would be such a huge part of everyone's lives only a decade later, let alone how much they've taken over our lives today.

There are times when I wish we could just go back to those days.  Days before email.  Before Facebook.  Before cell phones were disposable, let alone common.  Before we had to be connected, every single second of the day.  Sometimes I consider leaving my phone at home when I drive to the store, just so I can disconnect for a few minutes... but then I bring it along, anyway.  The days when phones were attached to our homes by wires are gone; the days when getting in the car meant nobody could reach us are gone.  "Call us when you get there," is gone, replaced by status updates and tracking software.

Is it possible, do you know?  If it's possible to disconnect, and live life actively, instead of under the direction of all of our wonderful, powerful, all-consuming technology?  Are things really better?  Or, are we simply distracted from reality by our new toys?  I really would like to know if it's possible to get out there, and live without being in constant, total contact, or if it could only mean coming in last for the rest of our lives.  After all... there are new sets of kids out there, today, growing up with their sets of favorite places... but more and more, their favorite places are on the couch in front of the X-Box and Playstation, instead of at the mall or riding bikes with their friends.

I guess in part, I just miss what we got to have when we were young.  And I wish that the youth of today could experience that for themselves, too.  I guess when they grow up, they'll be nostalgic about playing online games with friends who they only ever knew as voices in their headset, and shopping online at Amazon.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Removing that Pesky Toolbar!


Have you ever accidentally left a checkmark in place during an install?  Ever ended up with some pesky toolbar, or other form of software that occasionally just pisses you off??

I recently had such an experience.

Silly me, I decided I'd try to make a few bitcoins (yes, I decided to see what the fuss is about) by trying some so-called "surveys."  Of course, they're not surveys - they're "complete the offer to get the prize" scams.  You can't even often tell when you've actually completed the offer... and end up signing up for a dozen spam sites you'll have to unsubscribe from that very evening.

One of the "offers" I wound up completing was for the Shop At Home website and toolbar.

While technically not a virus, it gave me so much trouble in removal that I was halfway convinced it was one.

They give a great deal of detailed information on how to uninstall and remove their software on their website.  First, try "add/remove programs."  It's possible it may be installed under one of two names. (Isn't that a bad sign, right there?)  It may not be in the list at all, though.  Now, if you're using Firefox, open the browser, and get to the /tools/add-ons.  Click on the "Extensions" tab, if it's not already open.  Now, if you're like me, you start to freak out: there's nothing there!!

Most people will probably see a list of add-ons, and be able to click "remove" with no problem.  Not me, though!  You see, the nice people at Yahoo! sometimes put a download link on their webpages saying that "your version of Firefox is out of date: click here to get the latest version."  One time, some years ago, I did.  These nice people at Yahoo! took their 3rd party version of the browser and modified it to make it more friendly to their own website and toolbar.  They added the Yahoo! toolbar, with no option not to install it.  Since the Yahoo toolbar is (mostly) harmless, I just unchecked it and forgot it was there.  They also (so it seems) made everything on the extensions tab invisible, so there'd be no way to get rid of it.  The best you could do was to uncheck the toolbar in the "view" menu.

I'm afraid I spent a little too much energy e-mailing back and forth with some poor soul working at the ShopAtHome help desk.  Let's just say that, after a few e-mails, my attitude had become somewhat like... a jerk.  It's embarrassing, you know?  First, I had every reason in the world to believe that their simple looking bit of software had outwitted me, and all of my attempts to get rid of it.  Second, why on earth couldn't they put together a normal sort of uninstall program that anyone could use?  My verbal outpourings had, by the end, reached a point of threatening to go to every "partner" website they had and complaining about their virus-like software.  Thinking back on it, it probably would have sounded a lot better if that's what the problem really was.  Instead, I was just e-mailing outbursts of misdirected anger at someone who is (probably) innocent of wrongdoing.  The problem was the 3rd party Firefox package I'd installed years before much more than it was of theirs!

To help prevent outbursts like mine, I'd recommend following these simple instructions: that if the Firefox browser was installed from a 3rd party website such as Yahoo, it may be necessary for the user to 1) Go to the Mozilla Firefox website for a clean download, 2) Uninstall Firefox (but it's not necessary to check the box for removal of user information), 3) go to /Program Files and delete the /Mozilla Firefox folder (the folder will be different on a 64 bit machine!), and then 4) run the freshly downloaded installation software.  Upon opening the fresh install of Firefox, the ShopAtHome toolbar may still be at the top, but now you can go into /Tools/Add Ons and see what's actually installed in the Extensions tab.  From there, it's simple to remove whatever you want gone.


I hope this helps others out there to remove toolbars they're getting frustrated over - I only wish there'd been information that would have helped me better, sooner!