It's the Cruelty

As we all knew would happen, the president was acquitted.  Despite what he and his minions keep saying, it's not exoneration.  He's impeached forever, and there is no remedy for that.  Unsurprisingly, there was no contrition afterwards, only a 90 minute spew of  invective and anger in the East Wing.  What was particularly disturbing to me was the clapping and smiling on the part of his audience.  Clearly he now controls the hearts and minds of the Senate.

So now the retribution has begun.  Friday he fired Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, the wearer of a Purple Heart and the Combat Infantryman Badge.  Lt. Colonel Vindman was subpoenaed to testify before the House, and so he did.  This infuriated the president, so much so that when he removed Lt. Colonel Vindman from the NSC, he also removed his brother, who had no role in the impeachment inquiry.

Lt. Colonels Alexander and Yevgeny Vindman were escorted out of the White House in full view of the press.  This sends a bad message to the next person who is subpoenaed by a House committee.

Outrage has been predictable on the part of the Democrats.  The Republicans took issue with the firing of Gordon Sondland, a major donor to the party, but had not one word of support for the Vindmans.

When Lt. Colonel Vindman took his seat to testify, he assured his father that he would be fine, that things were different here than in Russia, and I thought then he was naive.  There may not be a gulag, but there is definitely retribution.

This is something I want to remember so in to the blog it goes.

And if things weren't bad enough, feral hogs are taking over the US.  You can read about it here.

The Fix to the Blogger Problem - Illustrated

Thursday morning I opened my laptop and went to blogger because I wanted to do a post.  Look in the upper corner, where it says create Create Blog Sign In.  If you're on your blog and are signed in to Gmail (which I was) it should show how you're logged in, New Post, Design, Sign Out.  So I hit Sign In.

And......... I went here, to the Dashboard.  At this point I freaked out, figured the blog was gone along with all of that history.  My phone was working, which is what I used to put up the Locked Out of Blogger post.  I put up a request for help on Blogger and was assigned help.  He turned out to be good help.

First we established that I was not logged in to the wrong account.  Then the consultant realized the navbar on the home screen was showing me as logged out. Notice that the editing symbol under the search box is missing.  Blogger in general knew that I WAS logged on and so would take me to the dashboard after clicking on Sign In.  Pretty weird, huh?  At this point we established that I actually could edit and produce a new post from the dashboard.   Then we moved in to clearing cache.  No effect.

Even though I knew I could still edit and produce posts, the whole thing was still stressing me out.  Then the consultant said this:

Here's what I think is going on. You have enabled one or more advert or cookie or tracking blocking settings or add-ins to your blog, and it or they are interfering in some way with the communication between blogspot.com and the rest of Google. I usually run Firefox with a lot of blockers, and have experienced this myself. The solution is that these blockers can be configured to whitelist blogspot.com.

From the dark recesses of my mind I dredged up a memory of altering my Firefox security settings after reading an article about digital fingerprinting.

What is it exactly? Fingerprinting involves looking at the many characteristics of your mobile device or computer, like the screen resolution, operating system and model, and triangulating this information to pinpoint and follow you as you browse the web and use apps. Once enough device characteristics are known, the theory goes, the data can be assembled into a profile that helps identify you the way a fingerprint would.

“Get enough of those attributes together and it creates essentially a bar code,” said Peter Dolanjski, a product lead for Mozilla’s Firefox web browser, who is studying fingerprinting. “That bar code is absolutely uniquely identifiable.”

This was the culprit.  I deleted the bottom three first, no change.  Then I deleted the cross-site and social media trackers.  Ta-da!  Problem solved.  I changed the settings last July.  In between then and Thursday, something changed in some code somewhere and broke communication between blogspot.com and the rest of Google. 

Until the consultant mentioned the tracking blocking settings, I had forgotten that I'd made those changes.  At that point I knew which settings to go change.  Now I'm back to being vulnerable to cryptominers and fingerprinters, but I guess that's the cost of the brave new digital world.

So, the moral of this story, is that if you change security settings or anything else in Firefox, please make a note of it.  If something on your laptop breaks, go undo what you did and see if that fixes it.  Blogger has good help with real people.  This is the second time they've helped me with something.  This  past Thursday's issue ran over six hours with back and forth emails and into Friday morning.  My other take home is that English is imprecise and always send screen shots of what you're trying to convey.

I'm Back on Blogger

I'm back and happy to be here.  Soon I will elaborate on what happened.  It was interesting.

Locked out of Blogger

I can't get to my blog on my laptop.  No idea why. It may be awhile before you hear from me. Posting on the phone is not doable.

Yep, still broken.

The Weather

The weather has become weird here.  Yesterday the talking weather heads were predicting high winds, plummeting temperatures and possibly locusts.  OK, maybe no locusts.  Anyway, at high noon the temperatures were in the upper 60s, winds were light and we went for a hike in shorts and tee shirts.  It was just a delightful day.

This is the harbinger of what is to come.  White puffy clouds.

As we headed out for hunting and gathering, the clouds were massing and getting dark.  I had to laugh at us, by the time we got to Target, the temperature had dropped significantly and the wind had picked up.  We had abandon our plans and go home for warmer clothing.  Dressing for the climate you want, rather than what you have is bad.

We saw this at the intersection of Mission and Ajo.  How does this happen?

When we got home, we covered the drive way bougainvillea.  That's the one we really want to survive.  It was difficult to wrap because of the wind.

Cactus under cover.  They're cold!

Tonight and tomorrow night it's going down into the 20s.  I'm not happy about this.

Cactus, Horses and a Lizard

Thursday we were feeling a little tired, so we decided to do stuff like go to Target, go to a cactus nursery on the far east side, and then finish up at Trader Joe's.  That was a perfect day for me.  We drove out to B and B Cactus Farm.  We got an advertising card that gave one free baby saguaro if you came out and looked.  So we did.

They have everything.  

This is an Agave Parryi, aka an Artichoke Agave.  We're contemplating one of these for the front yard.  The prickly pear is looking near death, so there may be a replacement.  The issue with these is they are slow growers, so you want a big one, but we can't lift a big pot.  Too heavy.  Their growth pattern is to put out pups.  Look at the bottom of both pots, the babies are trying to escape.

Another Agave.  They call these Cabbage Heads.

It's been cold out there, all of the growth tips are being protected from frost.  Jim just got back from the dollar store with styrofoam cups for a couple of our cactus.  Tuesday it's supposed to go down to 28.  Depending on whose forecast you listen to, it may or may not snow.

 

Then it was off to the tropicals greenhouse.  If we had land, there would probably be a green house.  They have the most spectacular plants in there.  This is a zoom on a flowering something.

The something.

Another one - they're just ethereal.

These are cool.  The one in the middle has an interesting growth pattern.

It sprouts clusters of arms off its arms.

There are furry cactus.

The baby cactus in the greenhouse.

More cool plants.

The shop cat.

It's an amazing nursery.  It makes me want to tear up the front yard and plant a lot.  Then I think about how hard it is to dig here and I reconsider.

Friday we were up and out for a hike.  We chatted with the horse people we met on the trail.  They're looking for a lot so they don't have to board the horses.  Apparently it's very expensive to do that here. 

On the way back we saw this guy hiding.  He's a Horned Toad Lizard, about an inch and a half long.  He's just cuter than a bug.  Hopefully he won't be eaten by a wretched road runner.

That's it!  Cactus, horses and a lizard.